The Government claims that suspending the right to vote for those naturalized under the Grandchildren Law violates the Constitution

Eduardo González Both the Public Prosecutor's Office and the State Attorney's Office have expressed their rejection of the Supreme Court's decision to provisionally suspend the right to vote of individuals who registered in the Electoral Census of Absent Residents (CERA) after obtaining Spanish nationality under the Democratic Memory Law (“Grandchildren Law”), arguing that it violates the Constitution itself, which establishes that the “active suffrage” of Spanish citizens residing abroad must be facilitated. Last Tuesday, the Fourth Section of the Administrative Chamber of the Supreme Court granted the provisional measure requested in the appeals filed by Iustitia Europa and Vox against the agreement of the Central Electoral Board, dated July 16, regarding the registration in the Electoral Census of Absent Residents abroad of individuals who have been granted Spanish nationality. In both rulings, the Supreme Court warns that the “extraordinary increase in the number of registered voters in the CERA (Register of Absent Voters Residing Abroad)” could “affect the transparency of the electoral process and public confidence in its results.” Specifically, the census has increased by 408,262 voters in the last three years, from 2,328,260 in the 2023 general elections to 2,736,522 on July 1st. This increase, it continues, “generates a well-founded, real, and serious risk of severely affecting the objectivity and transparency of the electoral process, thus causing irreversible damage.” For this reason, the Administrative Chamber has granted the request for precautionary measures in order to avoid “a well-founded circumstance of uncertainty regarding the election results.” The suspension will be temporary and subject to the Supreme Court's ruling. In the opinion of the Public Prosecutor's Office and the State Attorney's Office, this decision ignores a fundamental right and constitutes a violation of the Constitution itself, which establishes that the "active suffrage" of Spanish citizens residing abroad must be facilitated. Therefore, on behalf of the Government, they have requested that the appeal be dismissed and that the measures requested by the appellants be rejected. According to the two government entities, registration in the CERA (Register of Absent Spaniards Residing Abroad) "is simply a subsequent consequence" of having acquired nationality. For this reason, the State Attorney's Office considers that the appeal filed by Vox and Iustitia Europa should have been directed "against the acquisition of nationality," but not against the "legal consequences" of obtaining it, including "registration in the CERA." It also points out that registration in the CERA is independent of the "method of acquiring nationality," and therefore, in its view, the appeal constitutes discrimination against Spaniards who have become naturalized under the Law of Grandchildren. The State Attorney's Office also warns that there is no evidence that the increase in the census "will produce a real creation of results from a group of electoral processes", so the arguments of the appellant are based "exclusively on hypothetical and eventual risks". Pedro Sánchez In statements to TVE, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez expressed his rejection of the Supreme Court's ruling this Wednesday and his hope that this problem can be resolved "as soon as possible," ideally "before the 2027 elections." He also recalled that the Democratic Memory Law (LMD) was passed in 2022 and that the People's Party (PP) was, in fact, the party that benefited most from overseas votes in the July 2023 general elections, especially in "certain provincial constituencies," where registered voters abroad "changed and altered" their votes "in favor of the PP and against the Socialist Party (PSOE)." This was the case in the Community of Madrid, where overseas votes only affected one seat (and not several, as the PP claims) and, precisely, went in favor of the PP and to the detriment of the PSOE. For all these reasons, Sánchez questioned why the PP “is now changing its position” on a law that “has been in effect for several years” and under which “elections have been held.” In his opinion, all of this is part of the “challenge to democratic regimes” by the “far right and an increasingly extreme right wing” through the spread of “fake news” related to alleged “election fraud,” as, “unfortunately, we have seen in countries with strong democracies such as the United States.” The Council of Spanish Residents in Venezuela For its part, the Council of Spanish Residents (CRE) in Venezuela rejected the Supreme Court's decision in a statement and demanded the full recognition of the rights of Spaniards residing abroad against those who seek to question or restrict the rights acquired by Spanish citizens by birth under this Law of Grandchildren. The Venezuelan Council of Residents Abroad (CRE) believes that the Law of Grandchildren (LMD) has allowed many descendants of Spaniards to recover or acquire Spanish nationality after several decades in which their ties to Spain were conditioned by historical, political, economic, or migratory circumstances. Therefore, it warns that Spaniards born or residing outside of Spain cannot be considered second-class citizens nor have their political rights questioned solely because of where they were born. PP and Vox At the end of June, the president of the People's Party (PP), Alberto Núñez Feijóo, denounced the "Law of Grandchildren" as an "electoral ploy" implemented by the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, to grant voting rights to 2.5 million people in a very short period. 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 Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE). For his part, Vox's Secretary General in Congress, José María Figaredo, declared that this law constitutes a "slow-motion coup d'état" and demanded that Spaniards residing abroad be denied the right to vote by mail. Following the PP's complaints, Foreign Minister 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 very law was included in their 2023 electoral platform."

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