MADRID, Spain – The Supreme Court has kept some 163,000 Spaniards naturalised under the so-called grandchildren’s law out of the general election on 29 November, holding the government responsible for failing to comply with judicial orders to verify the legality of their electoral registrations. In two forceful rulings issued on Monday, the October 12 public holiday, the Administrative Litigation Chamber rejected the appeals of the State Attorney’s Office, almost identical to those of the Prosecutor’s Office, and fully confirmed the precautionary suspension of voting rights agreed in September at the request of Vox and Iustitia Europa. The magistrates consider that the executive is seeking to justify with the proximity of the elections an impossibility of reviewing naturalisation files for which they blame the administration itself.
Spanish Party Claims ‘Grandchildren’s Law’ Manipulates Overseas Voter Count
The court’s Fourth Section warns forcefully that a material impossibility of executing a judicial order cannot be alleged when the cause of non-compliance lies with the very administration responsible for complying, reproaching the government for requesting the lifting of the precautionary measures without providing information on their execution. The chamber notes that it is absolutely unaware whether the review work has even begun and concludes that the risk of irregularities in the formation of the electoral census persists.
The two rulings, of 70 and 71 pages respectively, confirm the measures imposed on 10 September in the proceedings brought by Iustitia Europa and Vox. The suspension affects Spaniards who acquired nationality through the first case of the eighth additional provision of the 2022 Democratic Memory Law, whose administrative interpretation is questioned. Those affected retain their nationality but cannot exercise the vote until they prove, through consular certification, that they meet the legal requirements without relying exclusively on the presumption of exile introduced by the Ministry of Justice.
The chamber recognises that the early calling of the general election substantially changes the scenario in which the precautionary measures were adopted, and also admits that the figures initially used were not correct. However, it considers that these circumstances reinforce the need to know the origin of the registrations and rejects that administrative difficulties justify lifting restrictions agreed to guarantee electoral cleanliness.
The magistrates are particularly harsh with the State Attorney’s Office, censuring it for having submitted in its appeal naturalisation data that were already available when the precautionary hearing was held on 7 September. The court questions why that information was not provided then, despite the government’s representation having it and the appealing organisations lacking the same means to obtain it. The executive has accredited that as of 31 August there were 168,896 Spaniards registered in the Electoral Census of Absent Residents under the questioned naturalisation case, but for the 29 November elections the census closed on 1 August must be used, in which 163,020 affected people appear.
The Supreme Court accepts the correction of the overall figures but reproaches that it has not been specified how many of those files have been examined to determine whether the holders effectively accredited the exile of their ancestors. The court denounces that not even an approximate figure has been provided of the 163,020 Spanish national voters registered in the census who acquired nationality through the application of the additional provision. The judges consider that information on compliance with one of their main orders has been completely omitted.
The majority of the chamber, with Antonio Narváez Rodríguez as rapporteur, insists that the protection of electoral transparency must prevail over the individual right to vote when there are well-founded doubts about the regularity of registrations. According to the rulings, the general interest in preserving the purity of the electoral process must prevail over the suffrage of those appearing in a census regarding which the administration has not clarified the registration conditions. The Supreme Court maintains that the risk of irregularities retains its intensity despite the number of those affected being lower than initially considered, reasoning that the possibility of incorrect registrations compromises confidence in electoral results and can affect the electorate as a whole.
The rulings also introduce a measure to allow the judicial defence of those naturalised. The Supreme Court orders the operative part of the rulings to be published in the Official State Gazette, in the Single Judicial Edict Board and on the notice boards of the consular registries that processed the files. Interested parties will have five working days from the day after publication in the Official State Gazette to appear with a lawyer and court representative and submit arguments against the precautionary measures. The court thus recognises that these people must have the opportunity to defend their rights, though it rejects annulling the previous rulings for not having initially summoned them, with the impossibility of individually identifying and citing all those affected forcing recourse to notification by edicts. During that period the processing of the main proceeding will be suspended.
The decision again carries the dissenting vote of magistrate María Alicia Millán Herrandis, who already opposed the September precautionary measures, with her disagreement centring on the scope of measures affecting the suffrage of citizens with recognised Spanish nationality and on the procedural limits of the litigation. The Supreme Court must also rule on the possible intervention in the proceeding of two organisations of descendants of Spaniards that have requested to appear as co-defendants, having opened a procedure for the parties to pronounce on their standing before deciding on their admission.
The rulings come at a particularly delicate moment for the organisation of the general election. Under the Organic Law on the General Electoral Regime, the census applicable to 29 November closed on 1 August and must be available from Monday for consultation in town halls and consulates, with eight days for claims whose resolution must be completed before 23 October. The State Attorney’s Office and the Prosecutor’s Office had warned that these deadlines made it unviable to examine all the files before the elections, with both institutions arguing that maintaining the suspension could translate into an effective deprivation of the right to vote for thousands of Spaniards who had legally obtained their nationality and whose situation had not been reviewed or annulled.
The controversy originated in the administrative interpretation of the Democratic Memory Law, approved in October 2022, which opened an extraordinary route to acquire Spanish nationality for children and grandchildren of exiled Spaniards as well as other descendants expressly included in the norm. The instruction signed on 25 October that year by Sofía Puente, then director-general of Legal Security and Public Faith, incorporated a broader interpretation of the right of option and established the presumption that all Spaniards who left the country between 18 July 1936 and 31 December 1955 had suffered exile. Vox and Iustitia Europa maintain that this instruction exceeded the content of the law and allowed nationality to be granted to descendants of Spaniards who had emigrated for reasons other than those contemplated by the legislator, with the extraordinary growth of the overseas census leading both formations to demand the intervention of the Central Electoral Board and subsequently of the Supreme Court.
The Central Electoral Board approved Agreement 204/2026 on 16 July, considering it lacked competence to rule on the legality of naturalisation procedures but ordering information to be gathered on the formation of the census and the territorial assignment of new voters. Four members issued a dissenting vote openly questioning the Justice Ministry instruction, maintaining that the administration had expanded by interpretive means the legal cases for naturalisation and defending that the board should intervene to prevent possible irregular electoral registrations.
The conflict reached the Supreme Court through the appeals of Vox and Iustitia Europa, and in September the Fourth Section found a founded, real and serious danger to electoral objectivity and transparency, agreeing to suspend the registrations and electoral effects of those affected until the proceedings were resolved. The magistrates stressed then that the administrative interpretation does not appear to conform to the content of the law, and in the new rulings insist that this assessment is provisional and that they have not yet definitively decided on the legality of the 2022 instruction or the scope of the Central Electoral Board’s competences.
The review ordered by the court must distinguish files in which the legal causes of exile were individually accredited from those resolved through the questioned administrative interpretation or presumption, a check depending largely on consular offices that carry a high workload. According to reports provided by the government, 16 consulates account for 142,739 registrations in the affected case, 84.5 per cent of the total registered at the end of August, with Havana, Rosario, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Caracas and Mendoza among those facing the greatest difficulties, and the documentation indicating that these offices could not complete the review before the closing of the census for the May 2027 regional elections, set for 1 January. To the 168,896 people already registered at the end of August were added 96,895 nationality applications approved and pending registry inscription, plus another 304,272 still unresolved, according to the documentation incorporated into the proceedings.
Supreme Court Suspends Voting Rights For Those Registered Under ‘grandchildren’s Law’
The government lamented on Monday the Supreme Court’s decision to maintain the precautionary suspension of the right to vote of those naturalised under the grandchildren’s law, awaiting whether the State Attorney’s Office studies the ruling. It seems the right to vote is not so relevant for some, Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said in an informal conversation with journalists during the official National Day reception, indicating that it now remains to be seen whether the State Attorney’s Office studies whether the Supreme Court’s precautionary suspension measures are a definitive resolution.
