Today I received from my lawyer an IRN number to check on the status of my application. When I logged onto the web site via the provided link, I saw the following information:
I checked where “Conservatória dos Registros Centais” is located, and the searched brought me to the following address:
And so, does it mean that my application, filed on-line, miraculously ended up in Lisbon instead of usual Porto, or am I reading the tea leaves here?
Mine says
Order location: Porto Central Archive
My understanding from the earlier posts in this thread is that most/all online “IRN lawyer portal” nationality applications get distributed to either of these two:
Both of which have even worse backlogs than the smaller centres… because they are where the online applications go!
It is 100% normal Roman. I would say “miraculously”, if your application were distributed to Braga/ Faro/ Gaia.. (which significantly have a shorter processing time than Porto/Lisbon).
As others already mentioned, both Lisboa and Porto are the two places where the online submissions are routed to. The difference between them is that Lisboa seems to be quite enthusiastic in meeting the regulation-mandated timeline for the initial completeness check, which is 30 business days. This already resulted in a number of ‘faltas’ issued to the folks who had one or more ‘missing’ things like expired apostille or whatever. While Porto appears to be quite relaxed and not eager to issue any faltas, except maybe one or two reported so far.
But if you had your application submitted from the start as ‘complete’ you have nothing to worry about even if your file is in Lisboa.
My wife’s got bounced by IRN because EdPro didn’t cough up the A2 certificate on time (despite her finishing the course on time). Lawyer wants to file an administrative appeal and is working on avenues for judicial appeals.
The administrative appeal, I guess it’s “only” EUR175, so.
The judicial appeal… will cost real money. I dunno. It’s become very hard to want to throw good money after bad. I mean, all I’m doing is joining another queue, right? The judicial system is backed up now, and then even if you get a judgment all that does is put you back in queue at IRN only even farther behind than you were.
At what point do you just say f■■■ it and give up?
Speaking of queues:
If you already have her certificate, it might be worth asking your lawyer to personally go to the IRN office and try to re-open her case. According to Telegram groups, some applicants managed to succeed with this approach.
As for when to throw the towel, that’s dépends entirely on your circumstances. We’re still in the game for now…
Hi folks, I dropped my guard about the whole thing and stopped paying attention after getting our cards in 2025. I missed the boat on applying early for the citizenship and my awesome lawyers failed to notify us.
I was curious what others who are in the same boat are thinking. From what I understand I am 2 more renewals and then an application for a 5 yr residence card away from applying for citizenship ~8 years and roughly 60k more in fees to the government and lawyers ( for 2 people ).
I am on the fence about cutting my losses but curious to hear if there are any avenues left for us to get out of this mess. Would appreciate any feedback, I have been out of the loop for some time now.
Best!
From applying yes, 8-9 depending on your card date, but from getting it approx. 12 years.
You can possibly spend some more in fees and cut it to 9 years through a wormhole if so desired, but that’s about as short as you can get with the known workarounds.
How exactly will it be possible to do that? What is that mysterious “wormhole”?
The “wormhole” (no pun intended) is the CPLP route which can be paved by a little extra investment. Just as in the once famous space trading video game - if you want to do a hyperspace jump, you buy a hyperdrive.
If you mean São Tomé’s CBI, I understand that’s plagued with its own delays… might still get it in time to be useful though no guarantees.
By paying even more on Argentina CBI, you can have argentian passport then from that get a spanish residency and 2 years later you will be eligible to apply for Spanish citizenship…Total time perhaps is about less than 5 years…
Anyone considering this likely falls victim to the wealth tax in Spain. Perhaps if you are desperate, but again, see the wealth part of the above
Note that this route does not work for expedited Spanish citizenship. You must be a “natural born” citizen (or qualify by decent) and not naturalized to one of their expedited countries.
To add to this - if I recall correctly, only certain nationals (not naturalized) are exempt from their limit on dual citizenship. While it might be a slight formality, with the way the world is going it is something to think about before doing something that can’t be undone, or would put you in a worse off situation.
Def sao tome will work. I already asked my lawyer about this. It cuts 3 yrs from the 10yr min time to apply for nationality
but alaways ask ur own lawyer.
