The Association of Judges for Democracy and the Progressive Association of Prosecutors reminded the Supreme Court this Saturday that their own jurisprudence establishes that a large number can only be deprived of a fundamental right, such as the right to vote, in cases of "clear legal evidence", which does not arise in the controversy over the so-called 'grandchild law', taking into account the debate established on the matter.
These judicial associations released a joint statement in which they set out their objections to the precautionary suspension of the right to vote for Spaniards residing abroad who have obtained nationality because they are direct descendants of exiles from Franco's regime, as made possible by the eighth additional provision of the Democratic Memory Law of 2022.
The Supreme Court decided this week, in response to an appeal from the Vox and European Iustitia parties, to suspend registration in CERA and therefore the right to vote for beneficiaries who do not prove that they are actually descendants of exiles for political, ideological or sexual orientation reasons. An instruction from the Ministry of Justice after the approval in Cortes of the Memory Law ordered that all Spaniards who left the country during the Franco regime be considered as such by default.
The progressive associations, in their statement, which recognize that it broadly coincides with the dissenting vote on the Supreme Court resolution issued by Judge María Alicia Millán, share the objective of the ruling to guarantee "the correct formation of the census and the transparency of the electoral processes" and clarify "the criteria for assigning the municipality of registration of voters residing abroad."
Now, they allege, on the one hand, that the Supreme Court's resolution affects the aforementioned Justice instruction and that this is “unrelated to the object of the main appeal” of Vox and Iustitia European, which targeted the law itself, while the instruction “in this procedure has not been challenged directly or indirectly.”
Secondly, JJpD and the APF denounce that, with the decision of the Supreme Court, recognized Spaniards are deprived of a constitutional right "without having been part of the process and without an individualized examination of their situation having been carried out", and that accreditation as descendants of political exiles "depends on a certification that they themselves cannot request", thus generating "a difference in treatment" with other citizens.
Furthermore, they warn that the risk of alteration of the census that the Supreme Court uses as the reason for its decision "is projected on future electoral processes that have not yet been called, while the damage caused by the suspension is, on the other hand, immediate and concrete."
Finally, they remember that "when a precautionary measure limits fundamental rights of a very large number of people, it is necessary that the weighing be carried out with especially intense rigor." In this regard, they emphasize that "the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court itself reserves this criterion to cases of clear legal evidence", while in this case there is a "legitimate interpretative controversy", which "must be resolved in the trial of the merits, with full contradiction and with all guarantees."
The statement also uses the principle of legal certainty, recognized in article 9.3 of the Constitution, which was trusted by Spaniards who requested nationality because they are descendants of exiles; a trust that is considered to be protected.
For all these reasons, Judges for Democracy and the Progressive Union of Prosecutors trust that the procedure “will be resolved as quickly as possible and, in any case, before any electoral process can be convened”, that the doubts about the Ministry's instruction will be resolved through the planned channel and not in response to the appeal by Vox and European Justice, and they make “a call for the public debate on this issue to be developed calmly, without converting the census electoral process or to the people affected by partisan confrontation.”
