The ease of registering before a notary as a common-law partner in Catalonia has consolidated this route as the main one for the fraudulent regularization of thousands of immigrants who are trying to get out of illegality. The Catalan territory has become a pole of attraction for groups organized to look for unions of convenience, which, once formalized in the Registry of Stable Couples of the Department of Justice, open the doors to apply for the family residence card community
Sources from the central unit of illegal immigration networks and document falsifications (Ucrif) of the National Police confirm that after the launch of this register in 2017, they have detected a considerable increase in requests for community family member cards by the foreign members of de facto couples. They have grown by 1,400%. “Catalonia is a strainer, they come from other communities to do it here. Sometimes they are citizens who know each other and, in exchange for little money, or even without paying anything, they do each other a favor. But there are also people who capture people in their countries of origin and organize how they should come to Spain. There are Facebook and Telegram groups dedicated to this; individuals who offer their services in Algeria, Morocco and also in Belgium and France, and then there are partners in Catalonia who are in charge of looking for couples”, explain Ucrif sources.
Part of the gear are announcers and managers “that border on professional ethics”, who prepare clients for interviews with the police in case there is an investigation.
The couples listed in the registry of the Generalitat’s Justice have increased from 7,179, in 2017, to 20,385, in 2022. At the same time, applications for the residence card of family member of community by de facto couples have past 1,024, in 2016, at the rate of 85 monthly, to 12,580, from the beginning of 2023, 1,572 per month. They have multiplied by 18.
The creation of the Generalitat register facilitated the process of registering as a couple. It can be done by certifying two years of cohabitation, a common child or by formalizing the relationship in a public deed; that is, before a notary public. It is the most used route: of the 120,045 couples registered between 2017 and July 31, 2023, 86.4% have done so to notarize, while the path of cohabitation and that of the child fall.
The procedure is fast, simple and cheap. It is enough to go to a notary with an identity document, declare that you are a couple and request registration in the register, after paying between 100 and 150 euros. No minimum joint registration time is required; in Madrid, for example, it takes a year.
79% of the couples that were formalized before a notary in 2022 are between a Spanish or European and a non-EU citizen. A trend that has continued, slightly upwards, since the beginning of 2023, according to data from the Notarial College of Catalonia.
The law does not ask the notary to verify that there is no deception, nor does it give him the tools to do so, explains the dean, José Alberto Marín. However, following the police alerts, the College sent a circular asking members to be more careful and, in case of suspected fraud, to claim additional requirements in the notary’s opinion, such as registration in common or, in its absence, that two witnesses certify the relationship.
“With the law in hand, notaries can do nothing more. Becoming a partner, like marriage, is a right that cannot be limited. If there is a punishable act, it must be the police who act, without prejudice to the fact that we act with the means at our disposal if we detect grounds for suspicion”, adds Marín.
The College demands that the law be changed. It makes no sense, argues the dean, that for a marriage a notary is obliged to ask questions separately to the parties, and to the witnesses who must present, and that there is no requirement for the de facto couple.
“Before it was chaos, since couples could only register at the town halls and not all accepted it, such as the one in l’Hospitalet de Llobregat; in addition, some required two years of cohabitation, and others, less time. Since the regulations governing the registration came into force, it’s a quick and simple process”, explains Antonio Segura García-Consuegra, member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Barcelona Bar Association. The marriage option is longer and more complicated, he adds.
About 75% of the couples registered in the register apply for the EU citizen family member card, which is renewed after five years. Ucrif researchers estimate that a high percentage of couples who process the card abroad are fraudulent, but only a minority are hunted due to the lack of means to verify if the relationship is real and if it has been paid for. In Barcelona, ??it is the Immigration Office that forwards suspicious applications to Ucrif, such as when there is a notable age difference.
The fraud group in the process of regularization, created specifically by the Police for this type of crime closely linked to the falsification of the register, has investigated 419 couples in Barcelona between January and June. The result has been 155 fines and 20 arrests for document falsification, punishable by up to three years in prison. The most serious cases are the constitutive of the crime against the rights of foreign citizens that favors irregular immigration, when it is shown that there has been profit, while those considered lighter are decided by administrative means.
The last large-scale police operation culminated in the spring in Martorell, Olesa de Montserrat and Igualada with the dismantling of a gang that was looking for Spaniards willing to become common-law partners with foreigners, in exchange for between 400 and 1,000 euros, and also property owners or tenants who wanted to register the false couples, for between 200 and 500 euros. Once they had everything tied up, they picked up the immigrant at the airport and accompanied him to complete the formalities. The fee for these services ranged between 6,000 and 10,000 euros. The capitostos lived in Belgium and traveled to Catalonia to instruct customers in what to do. In total, 95 fictitious couples were verified and 63 people were arrested.
Not all agreements are punishable. The police investigated a couple consisting of a seriously ill elderly man and a much younger Latin American woman. “The man was frank. He said that he did not have sexual relations with him, but that he looked after him, cleaned his house and cooked for him, that he was the only person who cared about him, because the children hardly visited him. That he wanted to leave everything to her. We gave him the favorable report”, explain the researchers.
The testimony of Carlos and Alberto (fictitious names), two Colombian friends, shows the other side of the coin. Alberto arrived in Spain two years ago and requested international protection alluding that he was a victim of extortion in his country. He settled in Madrid and worked as a store clerk in a supermarket chain. Everything was going well until he was denied asylum, which he has appealed, and he was fired. Now he works as a delivery man in a subcontract with thirteen-hour shifts. He believes that finding a partner of convenience is the fastest way to get the papers and break the spiral of exploitation. That is why he has come to Barcelona, ??where he has been introduced to a young woman who asks him for 6,500 euros, a lower rate than what was proposed to him in Madrid, where, moreover, the process is longer.
Carlos was the one who put him in touch with his future partner, replicating the model he himself followed. “We fixed everything when I was in Colombia. A relative who has been living here for a long time proposed me a Spanish nationalized woman, to whom I had to pay 5,000 euros to register me in her house and join us as a couple, although I know others who charge 7,000 ”, explains Carlos. In the end, he says, there was no money involved, since they fell in love and have been living together for almost a year and a half.
