Spain’s Supreme Court provisionally restricts voting rights for some descendants granted nationality under ‘grandchildren’s law’

Spain’s Supreme Court has ordered a temporary suspension of electoral registration for certain people who obtained Spanish nationality under the Democratic Memory Law, commonly known as the grandchildren’s law. The measure affects those whose nationality was granted on the basis of a government instruction that presumes exile, rather than individual proof that their Spanish ancestors were forced into exile.

The ruling, issued on Tuesday, partially grants interim measures requested by the far-right Vox party and Iustitia Europa. It will remain in force until the court delivers a judgment on the substance of the case. The Supreme Court’s detailed legal reasoning is expected to be made public in the coming days.

The decision concerns the Census of Absent Resident Electors (CERA), which enables Spanish citizens living abroad to vote in elections. It does not, at this stage, constitute a ruling on the validity of the nationality granted to those affected.

Who is affected by the suspension?

The so-called grandchildren’s law is an additional provision of Spain’s Democratic Memory Law, approved in 2022. ALSO READ: Spain rules Franco regime ‘illegal’ with new ‘Democratic Memory Law’.

The law includes a route to Spanish nationality for people born outside Spain whose parents or grandparents were originally Spanish and who lost or renounced their nationality as a consequence of exile for political, ideological or other reasons covered by the legislation. ALSO READ: Spain’s citizenship law for descendants abroad ignites election row.

A subsequent government instruction governing the application of the law by consular civil registries established that exile would be presumed for Spaniards who left the country between 18 July 1936 and 31 December 1955. Applicants relying on that provision must provide documentation establishing their ancestor’s departure from Spain.

Vox and Iustitia Europa argue that this interpretation has broadened access to nationality, and consequently voting rights, beyond what the legislation itself permits. They initially asked the Central Electoral Board (JEC) to prevent the votes in question from being admitted. After the board said it lacked competence to decide the matter, the organisations brought their challenge before the courts.

The Supreme Court has now ordered the suspension of both existing and new electoral registrations arising from the application of the presumption of exile. However, people who can demonstrate that they are descendants of Spaniards who suffered exile under the conditions expressly established by the law will retain their voting rights.

The suspension does not apply where consular registries certify that an applicant is descended from an exile without relying on the presumption contained in the government instruction.

To implement the measure, the court has instructed the JEC to obtain the relevant information immediately from consular registry officials. It has also ordered the Electoral Census Office to separate registration files based directly on the statutory requirements from those approved under the broader interpretation set out in the instruction.

Potential impact on the overseas electorate

Government figures indicate that approximately 2.4 million descendants of Spaniards who went into exile following the Civil War or as a result of persecution under Franco have applied for nationality through this route. Of those, 544,722 applications have been approved, while 306,000 people have already been registered as Spanish citizens.

The figures illustrate the potential significance of the dispute for Spain’s overseas electorate, although they do not establish how many people will ultimately be affected by the court’s suspension. At the 2023 general election, 2,327,388 Spanish citizens living abroad were eligible to vote.

PP and Vox welcome the ruling

Spain’s main right-wing opposition group, the People’s Party (PP), and the far-right Vox party have both welcomed the Supreme Court’s decision.

PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo recalled that his party had opposed the legislation and criticised what he described as the government’s ‘absolute opacity’ and the ‘urgency’ with which it was processed. ‘We were right,’ he wrote on X.

Alma Ezcurra, the PP’s deputy secretary for sectoral coordination, accused the government of seeking ‘quite shamelessly to alter the general elections so that Pedro Sánchez could perpetuate himself in power’. She said the party had encountered ‘a rule of law that works and a justice system that works despite all the government’s attempts to harass judges and magistrates’.

Vox, which brought the legal challenge alongside Iustitia Europa, described the interim ruling as a success. In a statement, the party said it had achieved the suspension of what it called ‘the attempt to manipulate the electoral census to alter the elections’. Vox MP Ignacio Hoces characterised the decision as a ‘great victory’ for his party.

Government warns of consequences for voting rights

The government has expressed its disagreement with the ruling, while the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the State Attorney’s Office had both opposed the requested suspension.

Their argument is that preventing the affected citizens from registering to vote would infringe the ‘right to active suffrage, a fundamental right recognised in the Constitution’. They also maintain that the measure effectively entails reviewing the granting of nationality, even though nationality itself is not the subject of the legal challenge.

Speaking after Tuesday’s cabinet meeting, government spokesperson and Inclusion, Social Security and Migration Minister Elma Saiz said the government ‘does not share’ the Supreme Court’s decision. ‘We trust in the impartiality of justice in the rule of law,’ she told reporters.

Justice Minister Félix Bolaños also criticised the interim measure, saying it ‘suspends the right to vote of thousands of Spaniards’. He called on the Supreme Court to deliver its final judgment before the next elections, adding: ‘We are talking about the most sacred thing, which is the right to vote.’

The PSOE accused PP and Vox of pursuing a shared strategy to undermine confidence in Spain’s democratic institutions. The party said that ‘hidden behind a far-right association is the shared strategy of PP and Vox to bombard every flank of our democratic system’, and argued that the initiative was intended to cast suspicion on electoral processes.

‘Feijóo is once again walking the path opened up for him by Abascal. The hard right and the far right are now indistinguishable,’ the PSOE said.

The Supreme Court’s forthcoming judgment will determine whether the disputed interpretation of the Democratic Memory Law can continue to provide a basis for electoral registration. Until then, the interim suspension will remain in place, with the distinction between applicants who have individually established their ancestry from exiles and those who relied on the government’s presumption central to its application.