A trip to London and and an introduction to citizenship (part 1)

The day began as many days do, with a hot shower.

But this hot shower was one with which I had little familiarity, being in the bathroom of a very old friend at whose house I had spent the previous night.

And why was I in an unfamiliar shower in deepest south London in Aug 2021 and not at home in Bristol? For a date at the Italian Consulate later that morning to see if they would agree my application to be an Italian citizen.

I mention the shower because like many unfamiliar bathroom fittings it had its own particular foible. A foible to me that meant I spent five mins mostly avoiding the scalding water, with no recourse to temperature change, given turning the relevant mechanical dial had no effect whatsoever.

Whilst dancing away from the jets of unfathomably hot water I reflected on my citizenship journey to this point, for that’s where this series of posts will focus.

Like many people I was gut wrenched by events of June 2016, when the UK voted to leave the European Union.  It had particular poignancy for me and Heather, as we had distant longings in the future to move to France - which of course this blog will chart.

I found myself, during the first covid lockdown in 2020 thinking about my heritage. I’d assumed up to that point that my Italian-ness, or more accurately my lack of it, meant citizenship could never be a consideration. The time at home from lockdown, a chance conversation with a friend, and our dream of starting a new life in later life slipping away, I started to look into it.

It transpires that Italian citizenship laws are relatively generous on the world scale of these types of things.

The relevant law is governed by the principle of jure sanguinis; that is, of blood descent. If you are able to prove an unbroken line of descent from an Italian national, then other things being equal you are eligible to be an Italian citizen. Of course proving such status can quickly turn complicated.

My great-grandfather Guilio, from some preliminary research on a reputable ancestry website, was born in Italy and emigrated to the UK shortly after his birth with his parents. My initial task was to check if the relevant criterion was met - did the line pass unbroken from him, through my grandfather and father, to me?

In practice this meant checking for evidence of naturalisation - in this case from an Italian to a UK citizen. If my great-grandfather, or indeed anyone else had naturalised to become a UK citizen before the birth of the next descendant then the line breaks. If not, each descendent is eligible to be an Italian citizen on the day of their birth.

The fantastic National Archives website in the UK allows you to search citizenship records, and through that I was able to ascertain that a person I thought was Guilio naturalised in 1950, well after the birth of his son (my grandfather). I applied for the relevant certificate and, after a delay due to staff not working at the actual archive due to covid, I received the confirmation I needed. Phew!

 

 That meant I could begin an application and document search properly, upon which I'll write more, including my trip to the embassy, in future posts.