Julio César Guanche
country” as an absolute cause of the inability to inherit. The Executive Committee of the
Council of Ministers required from 2010 on a mandatory basis “all travellers, foreigners and
Cubans residing abroad [who nevertheless retain their Cuban citizenship], in order to enter the
country, having a policy of travel insurance, with medical expense coverage, issued by
recognised insurance entities in Cuba” (Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers). In
these cases, “the justificatory basis is the non-recognition of migrant Cubans as members of
national belonging”, what a commentator has associated — in a political, not a technical
sense— with statelessness (Correa Álvarez).
In another sense, the Cuban Civil Code recognises statelessness, for foreign cases: it
regulates that the civil capacity of people without citizenship residing in Cuba (it does not
require permanent residence), is governed by current Cuban legislation (Article 12.2).
6.3. Dual citizenship
(Constitution, Article 32)
Multiple-citizenship is not allowed, but the right to change citizenship is allowed.
The practical impossibility of losing citizenship has been the object of an interpretation that
ensures that “two citizenships” are recognised, but not “double citizenship” (Prieto Valdés
2013b, p.15). This means that, when recognising “two” citizenships, the existence of a foreign
one is accepted, without losing Cuban citizenship. In practice, Cuban authorities do not accept
that a Cuban within the country has another passport. A recent issue that activated this was
the granting of Spanish citizenship by naturalisation to Cubans residing in Cuba who fulfilled
the conditions (By the Spanish Law 52/2007, of December 28th, “Law of Historical
Memory”). They obtained, within Cuba, Spanish citizenship, while continuing to maintain
their Cuban citizenship. Explicit attempts have been reported by some of the “double”
citizens, to renounce to the Cuban one, but, as has been written above, there is no procedure
for it (See also Piorno Garcell, Cutie Mustelier 2015).
The only transparent rule on the subject, and that is obeyed in practice, is not of a state nature,
but partisan. The internal regulations of the Communist Party of Cuba (CCP), which
according to the Constitution “is the leading force of society and of the State” (Article 5),
establishes that only “(e)xceptionally will Cuban citizens who also have another citizenship
be admitted into the party” (PCC). Consequently, those who acquired Spanish citizenship, if
they were militants of the PCC, lost that condition, and maintained Cuban citizenship.
7. Conclusions
In this text I have used as a framework the debate between liberal and republican conceptions
of citizenship. I have committed myself to the republican argument, which understands
citizenship as rights status, an active political practice and an egalitarian ideal. In this, the
republican thesis has an expanded conception of citizenship that does not limit it to the
passive enjoyment of rights but also to the creation of political identities through
participation.
In its logic, the dispute over access to citizenship as a rights-bearing status is linked to
the vocation of active participation, but also to the practice of politics as an egalitarian ideal,
RSCAS/GLOBALCIT-CR 2020/3 - © 2020 Author(s)
25