Spain prevents the vote of 163 thousand people out of doubts about nationality

O Spain's Supreme Court confirmed today that 163,020 people of Spanish nationality, acquired under the Democratic Memory Act of 2022, will not be able to vote in the early elections of 29 November.

The law grants the right to Spanish nationality to children and grandchildren of exiles between 1936 and 1955, during the civil war of 1936-1939 and the first 15 years of French dictatorship that followed, for political, ideological reasons, of belief or sexual orientation.

A week after the entry into force of the law in October 2022, the Spanish consulates and embassies received guidance from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MNE) saying that “the exile of all persons who left Spain between 1936 and 1955 will be assumed to live abroad.

According to official sources cited by the Spanish media, there have already been more than 2.4 million people requesting the start of the process of recognition of nationality in consulates, most of them in Latin American countries.

More than half a million applications for nationality have already been approved, according to the same sources.

The State Attorney’s Office revealed, in an appeal that it had sent to the Supreme Court, that 163,020 of these people had also requested registration in the electoral census abroad.

The Spanish who live and vote abroad are registered in a national constituency (in a province), and there are no circles for emigration.

In response to complaints submitted by the Vox (extreme right) and Iustitia Europa parties (without parliamentary representation), the Supreme Court suspended on September 10 in order to prevent the voting rights of persons who acquired nationality under the law of 2022 and asked the Central Electoral Board (similar to the Portuguese national election committee) for consulates to confirm, on a case-by-case basis, that they are effectively subject to exiles, in accordance with the legislation established.

The argument of the judges and complainants is that the guidance subsequently sent by the MNE is neither a law nor comparable and the Supreme considered there to be “a founded, real and serious danger of seriously affecting the objectivity and transparency of the electoral process.”.

Today, the Supreme Court refused appeals from the Public Prosecutor and the State Attorney's Office to lift the precautionary suspension decided on September 10, in view of the elections on November 29.

The Supreme has thus confirmed that 163,020 people of Spanish nationality cannot vote.

The State Attorney’s Office, on behalf of the Government, argued that the suspension violates a fundamental right and would render irreversible this “injury to the right to suffrage”.

The Supreme replied that the right of suffrage “is not an absolute right” and is “subject to general interests”, among which “to preserve the truthfulness and absence of irregularities in the electoral census, which must prevail over the particular interest of the citizen”.

The magistrates also rejected the principle that the right to vote is inescapable for obtaining nationality.

For Vox, fraudulent nationalities are being granted and there is a risk of electoral manipulation in small circles, in a suspicion also launched and publicly endorsed in various interventions by leaders of the People's Party (PP, right), the greatest force of opposition.

The government, led by the Socialists, regretted the Supreme's decision and considered that it was a violation of a fundamental right, a breach of democracy and the establishment that there are "first and second-rate Spanish".

The Prime Minister and leader of the Socialist Party (PSOE), Pedro Sánchez, has said several times that the right-wing and far-right parties wanted to “suppress an essential right of citizenship” to thousands of people, by “fearing the vote of the Spaniards”, and stressed that there were legislative elections in Spain in 2023, already after the law was in force, and that it was the PP that won the vote abroad.