Sofía Puente faced scrutiny over Sephardic nationality denials

Sofía Puente, the sister of Spanish Minister of Transport Óscar Puente, has faced scrutiny regarding her tenure as Director General of Legal Certainty and Public Faith within the Ministry of Justice. Data from the Ministry indicates that during her leadership, approximately 7,000 applications for Spanish nationality by Sephardic Jews were denied.

This shift followed a new instruction issued on January 30, 2020, which significantly tightened the evidentiary requirements established by Law 12/2015. Prior to this instruction, denial rates were reported to be nearly non-existent, at approximately 0.04%. The new mandate required descendants of the Sephardic community to provide much more rigorous documentation of their ancestry and demonstrate a deep, current link to Spain, leading to a surge in denials and legal litigation.

Beyond this controversy, Sofía Puente is a career prosecutor who graduated from the University of Valladolid and entered the prosecutor service in 1996. Her career includes roles in Cádiz, Palencia, and Valladolid, where she specialized in gender violence crimes. She previously served as a spokesperson for the Progressive Union of Prosecutors and transitioned into high-level public management at the Ministry of Justice in 2020.