Your result
Spain — Marriage
Possible
The route stays open to you. Spanish law deals with this case explicitly rather than leaving it to interpretation.
The widow or widower of a Spanish citizen keeps the reduced residence requirement of one year, provided there was no legal or de facto separation at the time of death. The death of your spouse does not close the route, and you do not need to have applied before it happened.
What you need is a year of legal residence in Spain — under a permit, continuous, and immediately before you apply. If you were already living in Spain with your spouse, that year may well already be behind you. If you are outside Spain, the year has to be served there, and the residence card you may have held as the family member of a Spanish citizen is worth checking: rights of residence for family members can survive the death of the Spanish spouse in certain circumstances, and that is worth establishing before assuming you have to start again.
You will need the marriage certificate registered in the Spanish Civil Registry, the death certificate, evidence that there was no separation, proof of your legal residence, the CCSE civics test and DELE A2 unless you are a national of a Spanish-speaking country.
We are sorry to be discussing this alongside a bereavement. If the residence position is unclear, that is the thing worth getting advice on first.