On Sunday night, Gustavo Monasterios went to sleep as a Venezuelan citizen. On Monday morning, he awoke to find that he was also an Italian.
Monasterios, 47, was at the epicenter of the legal earthquake that took place in Italy last week.
After nearly two years of steady restrictions on citizenship by descent, during which the government barred the way to an Italian passport for swathes of the diaspora through a series of rulings, Italy’s supreme court overturned one of the restrictions — thanks to a lawsuit Monasterios brought.
The so-called “minor issue,” which had ended the dreams of citizenship for hundreds of thousands of Italian descendants, particularly in the Americas, was abolished.
Monasterios — who had lost his initial suit for citizenship in 2021, as well as his appeal in 2023 — had made a last-gasp appeal to the Corte di Cassazione, Italy’s supreme court, through his attorney, Monica Restanio.
