MADRID, Spain – The Supreme Court has provisionally suspended the voting rights of descendants of Spaniards registered under the so-called Grandchildren’s Law, with the Third Chamber taking the decision just one day after both Vox and Iustitia Europa requested these precautionary measures due to the irreversible effects they argued could occur on the electoral register. The high court conditions the registration in the Census of Absent Residents on the certification that those who have obtained nationality are children or grandchildren of exiles for political, ideological, belief or sexual orientation reasons who had lost or renounced Spanish nationality, and mandates the Central Electoral Board to require this documentation from those responsible for consular registries.
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By a majority of five to one, the magistrates established that those who have obtained Spanish nationality and have not yet been registered in the census will continue with the processing of their files until completion, but thereafter will be provisionally suspended until the aforementioned certification is obtained, with the same applying to those who have already completed the entire process. These measures will remain in force until a ruling is issued in the proceedings. The commonly known Grandchildren’s Law, under a provision within the Democratic Memory Law enacted on 19 October 2022, allows children and grandchildren of Spaniards of origin to opt for Spanish nationality, provided they accredit the requirements of having been born outside Spain and that their parent, grandparent or great-grandparent were originally Spanish and had suffered exile for political, ideological, belief or sexual orientation reasons. However, one week later, the government approved an instruction stating that the condition of exile would be presumed for all Spaniards who left between 1936 and 1955.
The Supreme Court has now ruled that all cases must be certified and that those who have obtained nationality must demonstrate they are descendants of those who suffered repression in accordance with the law. In other words, consulates must accredit that nationalisations are carried out in accordance with the requirements of the law and not the instruction in order to be registered in the Census of Absent Residents. The court also ordered the Electoral Census Office to proceed with the breakdown of census registration files that derive from the direct application of the exile cases provided for in the law, as well as those approved under the interpretation made by the instruction. The court further requested that the Central Electoral Board urge the Electoral Census Office to remit the complete report requested on 16 July regarding the application of the Grandchildren’s Law and postal voting by absent residents, as well as the preparation of an instruction with precise criteria for determining the municipality of electoral registration.
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Approximately 2.5 million people have applied for Spanish nationality through the Grandchildren’s Law, of whom 544,722 have already been approved and approximately 306,000 are already registered as Spanish citizens, according to the latest official data. While the government has expressed regret over the Supreme Court’s decision, Vox has celebrated the Chamber’s granting of its request for precautionary suspension, with parliamentary spokesperson Pepa Millán declaring that they have managed to stop Pedro Sánchez’s objective of perpetrating a coup in the next elections, also boasting in contrast to those who only limited themselves to warning about it, a veiled reference to the Popular Party, which has also been highly critical of the Grandchildren’s Law but did not appeal to the high court.
