This description from the registrar of the Civil Registry of Porto adds some colour to the process you’ve experienced…
New nationality applications must be submitted through an IRN platform, which receives the documents and, after the applicant pays the fee, the application is registered in the system.
After this, the so-called preliminary analysis takes place on the part of the Portuguese Registries which, according to Regulatory Decree No. 237/2006, must be carried out within 30 days. The reality, however, has been very different.
After the initial analysis, the process receives an access code for tracking and an indication of which registry office will analyze the request.
Isabel, however, stated that until the access code is actually sent to the applicant, there is no record of the process in the system .
“There’s no point in sending the original documents to the Registry Office because nobody knows where the file is; it doesn’t have a file number. As long as we don’t submit it on our platform, there’s no administrative process,”