Report on Citizenship Law: Cuba institutions” (a novelty with respect to the previous history); Cubans by naturalisation residing in the country of their birth, unless they express every three years, before the corresponding consular authority, their will to preserve Cuban citizenship; and the naturalised ones that accept a double citizenship. In other words, a regulation very similar to that of 1940, except for the reference to arms and to acting “against the people of Cuba and its socialist and revolutionary institutions”. The article stipulates crimes and causes of indignity that would cause the loss of citizenship by naturalisation, which had to be verified by a final judgment of the courts. In addition, it establishes that the formalisation of the loss of citizenship by serving a foreign army or attacking Cuba from the outside would be made effective by decree of the Council of State. The recovery of citizenship could also be obtained in accordance with the law. Article 31, as reformed in 1992, is still valid today: it leaves the legislator free to define the causes for losing citizenship, it maintained the reservation of law for the recovery of citizenship, it specified that double citizenship is not accepted, as in the case of acquiring a foreign one, the Cuban one will be lost, but admitted the right to change citizenship30. In the absence of a citizenship law, there is currently no regular procedure for its loss. According to the norm, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MINREX) must instruct a file of loss of citizenship when it becomes aware that a Cuban citizen has acquired another citizenship and communicate its decision through a resolution. Then, MINREX must submit its decision to the Ministry of Justice, for registration in the Civil Registry. However, by state decision, MINREX refrains from making this type of declarations. The result is that, in practice, Cubans who reside outside the national territory, and who have acquired a new citizenship, do not lose the Cuban one. Therefore, they must enter the country with a Cuban passport, unless they have emigrated before December 31st, 1970, or can provide documentary evidence of the loss of Cuban citizenship. For all national purposes, only Cuban citizenship is recognized. There is a legal possibility to renounce citizenship, but no procedure for this. A related issue is statelessness, which, is not recognised by the current Constitution, nevertheless has had a history and some occurrences. At the beginning of the revolutionary process, by Cause 111 (April 1962) pursued against the attackers of Playa Girón, those defendants that had Cuban citizenship were sanctioned with its loss, “for their betrayal of the Fatherland”. One commentator noted that “as a result, [they] had been granted the legal status that corresponds to their status: stateless!” (Garriga 1973, p.58). The language and method were consistent with the treatment of the issue within “real socialism”, in which the crime of treason turned the citizen into a stateless person, was judged among the most serious and was sanctioned with all the rigor of the law. The term “stateless” —as an insulting political qualifier— became commonplace in language and Cuban political discourse, as synonymous with “disaffection” or “counterrevolutionary”, and was even used to name migrants, often considered “counterrevolutionary” during the first three decades after 1959. On the other hand, measures have been applied that would to a certain extent cause statelessness. Law No. 989 of December 1961 provided for “the nationalisation through confiscation in favour of the Cuban State, of the assets, rights and actions of those who are absent from the country with a definitive character”, regulation amended in 2012. Currently, the Civil Code in force (Law No. 59 of 1987), maintains “having definitively abandoned the 30 The justification for this change was formulated as follows: "In Chapter II on citizenship, the main modification is proposed in Article 32, replacing the current text, to our judgment very regulatory, with a more flexible one, which forwards to the law the details that regulate the provision that “Cubans cannot be deprived of their citizenship or the right to change it, although it reiterates the constitutional principle that the existence of cases of dual citizenship will not be admitted””. Escalona Reguera, Juan 1992. 24 RSCAS/GLOBALCIT-CR 2020/3- © 2020 Author(s)