The Diocesan Archive of Ourense reveals that due to the existence of this black market, they have been forced to ensure that documents bear the signature of the vicar.
14ymedio, Madrid, 21 March 2025 –“There are more and more people from Ourense on the streets of Havana or on Ribadavia Avenue in Buenos Aires. They are Ourensanos who don’t know Ourense, who have never stepped foot on the Couto or Marcelo Macías.” This is how the program En Portada, on the local channel of Ourense, Telemiño, began this Thursday. It revealed that there is a black market in Cuba for false birth certificates to prove Spanish origin and request nationality in accordance with the Democratic Memory Law. The price reaches 2,000 or 3,000 euros for a document whose real version costs 10,000 euros.
Pablo Cid, in charge of the Diocesan Historical Archive, said that every day they receive 30 to 50 emails requesting information about birth, marriage or death certificates of those interested in finding out if they have an ancestor from Ourense. “On weekends the number goes down a little, but from one day to the next we still leave with our inbox empty, and the next day we arrive and there are 40 emails, mainly from Cuba, Argentina and some from Mexico. Well, there are many from Miami, but because of the issue of Cuba,” he says.
In 2024, 500 new Ourensanos registered in the census of Spaniards abroad thanks to the nationalization obtained through this law. In addition, the archive resolved 20,000 requests for information. It can be assumed that more Galician citizens will emerge thanks to the Democratic Memory Law, whose application period began in 2022 and closes in October of this year.
In 2024, 500 new Ourense citizens registered in the census of Spaniards abroad thanks to the nationalization obtained through this law
According to data from the Centro de Descendientes de Españoles Unidos, more than 200,000 people have already received the passport, to which must be added more than a million people, including the 300,000 Cubans involved in the process. But Pablo Cid left a disconcerting fact in his speech yesterday: Cuba is the only country in which the black market of certificates has such a considerable volume that it has reached the ears of the Historical Archive, which has been asked to take extraordinary measures.
“For any country in the world, documents sent bearing the stamp of the Archive and the signature of the director are enough for them to be valid. But since one month ago, birth certificates coming from Cuba are required to carry the signature of the vicar. At first we didn’t know why, but then we discovered that they were falsifying the documents,” Cid revealed. “There was a massive influx of forged certificates, and they decided to make it more difficult. Someone told me that any Cuban can buy a false one for 2,000 or 3,000 euros.”
The archivist commented that the queries that arrive at the archive are very diverse and refer to ancestors who allegedly left Galicia at the end of the 19th century, for whom it is impossible to find anything. Or they ask about people known only by name, and finding something is statistically impossible or the results ambiguous. Most attempts come, of course, from countries “with problems.”
Among them, he says, are Venezuela and, of course, the Island. “Cuba is one of those that is always in the ranking, because the economic and political situation encourages the population to leave.” Those invited to the program, including an economist and a journalist, addressed an issue that was”unthinkable” for them 10 or 20 years ago: the increase in population in a province that has been depopulated for decades.
Ourense, the only one of the four Galician provinces without sea access, is the least populated and the one with the lowest per capita income, so the participants on En Portada considered it very positive that the population would increase and contribute to the maintenance of the State. In addition, they defended the right of immigrants to be welcomed as Spaniards were when they emigrated.
“I am one of those who think that we have emigrated to other countries for years, if not decades and centuries. Now we find that in those countries, which used to work better than Spain, there are problems. And I think it is fair to return to the groups that are there and that have an interest in moving to our country the same opportunity that they gave us at the time,” said economist and professor José Ángel Vázquez Barquero.
“And I think it is fair to return to the groups that are there and that have an interest in moving to our country the same opportunity that they gave us at the time”
Pablo Cid, who spoke at length about the complexity of some inquiries, was also asked about the worst things he has seen in this work, among which, scams aside, he spoke of the discomfort generated by the fact that there are companies and lawyers “taking advantage of the situation to make money” even if it is legal. The archivist, who says that the process of obtaining a document costs 10 euros, said that among the workers of the institution there is an internal joke about “adding a zero” when the request comes from this type of company, charging 200 or 300 euros for the procedure. “We do the work, but the money goes somewhere else,” he smiles.
The broadcast gave half an hour to discussing the programs of the Xunta de Galicia to attract emigrants and the job possibilities that exist in the province of Ourense and the region. But many of those new Spaniards may never leave for Spain but may find another value in their passport, such as a mobility that a Cuban passport will never give them.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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