ROME — The Spanish government has offered citizenship to the 222 political prisoners deported by the regime of Nicaraguan dictator Daniel Ortega last Thursday.

All of the prisoners, who included opposition party leaders, were stripped of their nationality and deported to Washington, D.C., where they were allowed into the country under a temporary humanitarian visa.

“The government offers Spanish nationality to these 222 released prisoners, given the news that the process has declared them stateless,” said Spain’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares Albares, in an interview with Spanish media outlet Servimedia.

The offer was praised as a “beautiful gesture” by renowned Nicaraguan novelist and essayist Sergio Ramirez, who decades ago served as Ortega’s vice president. Those released “will have a homeland as long as Nicaragua does not recover its freedom and democracy,” Ramirez said in a Twitter post.

“Today is a great day for the fight for freedom in Nicaragua as so many unjustly convicted or prosecuted prisoners are released from prisons, prisons where they should never have been,” he added. “They go into exile, but they go to freedom.”

Supporters of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega take part in a pro-government march in Managua on February 11, 2023. Nicaragua released and expelled to the United States 222 detained members of Nicaragua’s opposition, stripping them of their citizenship, in a surprise move by the Central American country’s increasingly authoritarian president, Daniel Ortega. ( OSWALDO RIVAS/AFP via Getty)

Among the deportees were former presidential candidate Cristiana Chamorro and her brother, the former minister Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, as well as other politicians who intended to challenge Ortega in the 2021 national elections. Both are children of former president Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, who led Nicaragua from 1990 to 1997.

The Nicaraguan judge who certified the expulsion declared that all were deprived in perpetuity of their political rights and stripped of their Nicaraguan nationality.

On the same day, the parliament made up of Ortega supporters approved a law according to which “traitors to the homeland lose the quality of Nicaraguan nationals.” Since it entails a change to the state constitution, the measure will require a second legislative approval later in the year, which is taken for granted.

Bishop Rolando Álvarez of Matagalpa did not accept exile and instead was thrown into the notorious Modelo prison to serve a sentence of 26 years and 4 months after being found guilty of treason, spreading fake news, and undermining the integrity of the nation.

“Let them go free, I will pay their sentence,” Álvarez said in reference to the 222 who were deported.

The Ortega regime arrested hundreds of his political opponents as part of the crackdown that followed 2018 protests against the dictator, who has held power since 2007 through a series of rigged elections.