The CGCEE ensures that the Grandchildren Law is not limited to exiles and denies “express” regulations

The Diplomat The General Council of Spanish Citizenship Abroad (CGCEE) has asserted that the granting of Spanish nationality under the Democratic Memory Law ("Grandchildren Law") "is not limited to cases of political exile" and has denied that any "express naturalization" is taking place. The Grandchildren Law, the CGCEE stated in a press release last week, "is not limited to cases of political exile, but rather contemplates various situations related to the transmission of Spanish nationality expressly provided for by the legislator," and clarified that its purpose "is to correct historical situations that prevented or hindered the transmission of Spanish nationality to certain groups of descendants of Spaniards abroad." Furthermore, the Council asserted, in response to accusations from the People's Party and Vox, that “no ‘express naturalization’ is being carried out” to facilitate the participation of new Spanish citizens in electoral processes, but rather that “the processing of applications continues through administrative procedures and will require several more years to complete, due to the high number of pending cases.” On the other hand, the CGCEE rejected the request from political forces such as Vox to prevent postal voting from abroad and defended, in this regard, the right of citizens abroad to exercise their political rights “on equal terms with all other Spaniards.” The press release comes after the controversy generated by the president of the People's Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who denounced in late June that the "Grandchildren Law" is an "electoral ploy" implemented by the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, to grant voting rights to 2.5 million people in a very short period of time. He also asserted that "there is a great deal of arbitrariness" in the procedure for registering new Spanish citizens on the electoral roll, which could lead to the assignment of provinces to these new citizens based on the electoral needs of the Socialist Party (PSOE). For her part, the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, warned that “every consul and every official who grants citizenship to someone who doesn't deserve it should know that they too would be doing something illegal, and that serves as our warning.” The secretary general of Vox in Congress, José María Figaredo, declared that this law constitutes a “slow-motion coup” and demanded that Spaniards residing abroad be denied the right to vote by mail. Following the PP's complaints, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, stated that “what the People's Party wants is for three and a half million Spaniards to be unable to vote,” and denounced the “enormous hypocrisy” of Feijóo and the PP because “this law was precisely what they included in their 2023 electoral platform.”

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