The delay by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in gathering data on the 163,000 naturalized Spaniards whose right to vote has been suspended threatens to unleash a huge legal battle after the general elections on November 29. And a barrage of challenges to the results. This has been confirmed by the electoral authorities and that is the big question that the Supreme Court will have if the Government does not manage to comply with its order to discern in time, one by one, which of those nationalized by the law on grandchildren can vote and which cannot.
If the bureaucratic blockade continues and there is no way to 100% anticipate the veto of the suspended voters, the Supreme Court will have to decide whether to annul the entire external vote or lift the precautionary measures and allow a total scrutiny. Both options would generate challenges to the elections in each constituency. Either on the part of the PSOE - Félix Bolaños, for example, has denounced the "altered census" -, for example, or on the part of Vox and Iustitia Europa, who were the ones who appealed to the High Court.
No one - not the Central Electoral Board, not the Census Office, not Foreign Affairs, not the Supreme Court itself - is clear at this time how the Electoral Census of Absent Residents (CERA) will finally be constituted.
The Ombudsman has filed an appeal with the Constitutional Court (TC) so that all naturalized citizens can vote. If the TC decrees precautionary measures, it could in turn suspend the Supreme Court's precautionary measures, and all those affected could vote. The guarantee court has a few days to make the decision. And in the middle of the electoral pre-campaign.
As EL MUNDO revealed on Friday, the General Directorate of Spaniards Abroad and Consular Affairs, which belongs to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has not yet transferred to the Census Office the data on who are affected by the Supreme Court's measures to provisionally suspend the vote, which of them have certified that they are grandchildren or children of exiles and, in general, who complies with the law or not.
On September 10, the Supreme Court ordered this procedure to be carried out, but Foreign Affairs has not carried it out for 38 days and has not yet sent any of the data not previously computerized, which is the vast majority. In fact, the Supreme Court does not have any list. If Foreign Affairs does not manage to have the final document in time, an uncertain scenario will open that will lead to massive challenges to the CERA results that the polls show.
Because? Because, if this complete list does not arrive in time, the vote of the people registered in the CERA would be impossible to discern. And the decision made by the Supreme Court would lead to a legal battle no matter what. If the final census is obtained, but late, the provincial electoral boards will be able to challenge the votes a posteriori, since the CERA vote will be counted on December 4. To do this, the voters' census certificates will be checked one by one, crossing them with the list of people whose vote was suspended by the TS.
What data should be checked now? According to the resolution of the High Court, "the suspension will not apply" when those in charge of the consulates "issue, under their responsibility", a certification that proves that, as of August 1, 2026, these people accessed nationality by documenting that they are children or grandchildren of exiles "for political, ideological or belief reasons or sexual identity orientation", as established by the Democratic Memory Law and not the subsequent instruction.
The Census only has right now - as its director declared at the meeting of the Central Electoral Board on Thursday, as this newspaper has learned from in-person sources - with the database of the Ministry of Justice on 70,000 nationalized in 2025 and 2026. For the rest, Foreign Affairs has issued, via telegram, instructions to the consulates to use all possible means to fulfill the enormous task of discerning and listing all those affected by the precautionary suspension of the right. to vote. The telegram "underlined the importance and urgency of the process," according to Ministry sources. But the Census Bureau is pessimistic.
The objective of Foreign Affairs is "that the maximum number of this group of voters (whose data is not recorded computerized) can be identified before the elections", but without offering a total guarantee. The order of the Supreme Court gives a period of five days, counting from the day following its publication (from October 13) for interested parties to claim "documentation that would allow them to remain as voters, a period that will not expire until next week," argues the Ministry.
In effect, this five-day period will end, if you don't count the weekend, on Tuesday the 20th. But the problem is checking who is affected and who is not. Data is missing.
Foreign sources assure that "the Spanish consulates are doing their utmost to comply with the precautionary measures of the Supreme Court on the vote of people naturalized under the Democratic Memory Law." "The Foreign Service officials are dedicating all their time to this effort. They do it in an excessively short period of time for the volume of files, many of them not computerized, and in a schedule accelerated by the electoral call," they lament.
