I have a question that I have not found any related source, and my question is mostly focused on these group of people: *"People of origin from [Ibero-American countries][1], Andorra, the Philippines, Equatorial Guinea or Portugal or Sephardic, who are pursuing a **PhD** in **Spain**."*

In many European countries, such as Poland (where I reside) or the Czech Republic (where a person I know resides) your studies as a *master or doctoral* student (*not undergraduate*) count as half of residence time in these countries and in countries like The Netherlands, if you pursue a PhD (**strictly a PhD**), your years of residence are counted as full-time residing in that place.

Based on the previous examples, if you pursue a PhD in Poland or Czechia for 4 years, it means: *"You have lived 2 years and if you learned Polish (B1+) and worked for 3 years more, then you are eligible for the **permanent residence** card."*

And in The Netherlands, if you pursued a 4 years PhD (considered as regular work by their law), passed the integration test, worked 1 year more and learned Dutch (B1+), you are eligible apply for the **permanent residence** card.

Now, my question is:

> What is the situation in Spain? Does the doctoral student's time count
> towards to your citizenship?

Because I read that in certain articles the following:

> "In the case of nationals of origin of Ibero-American countries,
> Andorra, the Philippines, Equatorial Guinea or Portugal or Sephardim,
> they may apply for Spanish nationality at the time of serving two
> years of legal and continued residence in Spain, and immediately
> prior to the request."
>
> *Source in Spanish: [Nacionalidad española, Gobierno de España
©Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, Unión Europea y Cooperación*][2] *at 2019-12-02 16:39*

The time as a *"doctoral student"* is not something clear in most of cases and less their legal status (*in The Netherlands you get researcher's visa, not a student's one*, for instance). I only found that in Spain if you're [a regular student][3] (not a PhD one) your time is not counted.

And it's perfectly reasonable, since generally, when you're a regular student either you have a scholarship or you're paying your studies; technically, you tend to be exempt of paying taxes and you get some benefits. And this point of paying taxes is where a key difference comes into play between a regular student and a PhD researcher, since taxes are used, for retirement or social benefits like health or social care.

Also, as a PhD researcher, you might need to teach certain amount of hours per semester, work on your research full-time, write and present scientific papers, support other professors and rarely, you will receive some classes since you're becoming an expert in one specific are of the science.

Most of time, a PhD researcher could be seen as regular worker because it has certain responsibilities, pay taxes, get a salary, and most importantly is creating a unique solution to a problem with more or less clear goals and expected outcomes in a defined period of time (*in the corporate world, **a project***) for a company, government, the university or an organization. An example could be the following one: *"To design an algorithm for the detection of breast cancer with Machine Learning."*

For all previous reasons, in most of European countries, a "doctoral student" is considered as a researcher inside the universities and the concept of scholarships tend to be uncommon (*Canada, the US, Australia, etc. Cannot be taken as the general rule*) because even in **[Marie Curie][4]**, which provides many of the EU "PhD scholarships", for instance, they are considered as jobs not scholarships as you can see in the image below.

[![marie curie][5]][5]

Therefore, have any of you have heard about it?


  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibero-America
  [2]: http://www.exteriores.gob.es/Portal/es/ServiciosAlCiudadano/InformacionParaExtranjeros/Paginas/Nacionalidad.aspx
  [3]: https://legalteam.es/lt/la-tarjeta-de-estudiante-no-computa-para-la-nacionalidad-espanola/
  [4]: https://ec.europa.eu/research/mariecurieactions/how-to/find-job_en
  [5]: https://i.sstatic.net/GAREh.png