Stateless by choice

"Nationality is understood as a quality conferred on a person by the fact that he or she belongs to a national community organized in the form of a state. This project stems from my disidentification with the nation-state structure and my rejection of nationality as an imposed identity construct.

I requested several public institutions to process the renunciation of my nationality to acquire the status of stateless person, a request that was refused without giving any reason. In response to this refusal, I commissioned a lawyer to write a report on the subject based on Spanish law. The report revealed that only the loss of nationality is contemplated, namely as a punishment imposed by the State, and in no case the possibility that a person can renounce his nationality.

Based on Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, according to which “all human beings are born free”, I commissioned a second report from the lawyer to find out whether, via the right to self-determination, I could renounce my nationality. Her research revealed that this right is only recognised as a collective right in the process of creating a new state or nation; in other words, this right only allows for the reproduction of the same structure.

After a year and a half, the Ministry of Justice notified me that my request was impracticable: the current legal framework does not provide for the possibility of an individual not having a nationality of their own free will. In other words, every person must necessarily belong to a state. And even if the state does not allow him or her to renounce it, it does reserve the right of expulsion."