The children of Spaniards naturalized by the law on grandchildren living abroad will be able to vote on 29-N. The Supreme Court has refused to extend to this group the suspension of the right to vote that it decreed in September for the children and grandchildren of emigration and exile who have obtained nationality with the Democratic Memory Law. The Contentious-Administrative Chamber has rejected the request of Iustitia Europa and Vox, who demanded that the measure adopted by the judges for more than 163,000 nationalized as descendants of exile be extended in turn to their children, nationalized by another section of the Memory Law that is not affected by the suspension of the vote agreed by the Supreme Court. The State Attorney's Office had opposed this possibility and argued before the judges that extending the suspension of the right to vote would jeopardize compliance with the legal procedures for 29-N and could even affect the scrutiny.
The magistrates have adopted this decision considering that the request from Vox and Iustitia Europa was raised “more than half of the electoral period had passed, one week before the start of the electoral campaign”; and, in the case of naturalized citizens residing abroad, two weeks from the start of depositing the vote in the ballot box at the consulates. In this sense, they have determined that starting now a process of reviewing the electoral roll of Spaniards residing abroad - "in addition to the questions raised by the material possibility of effective execution in the short period of time existing until the date of voting and its scrutiny" - is "contrary to the demands derived from the principles of legal security and electoral stability."
The data from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs incorporated into the procedure by the State Attorney's Office put at more than 189,000 people who have been nationalized due to the assumption of the Memory Law on which the Supreme Court was now focusing. In September, the high court ordered the exclusion from the census of more than 163,000 new Spaniards who acquired nationality under the umbrella of section 1.1. of the eighth additional provision of the Memory Law, which recognizes the right to nationality, among others, to the children and grandchildren of those who have lost it after having gone into exile for political, ideological or sexual orientation reasons. But that decision of the Litigation Chamber left within the census the children of those whose vote was suspended and who have become nationalized thanks to them. The latter - in many cases great-grandchildren of Spaniards who went into exile or emigrated in the post-war period - have also acquired nationality through the Memory Law, but under one section, 1.b of the eighth additional provision. It is this group that Iustitia and Vox demanded that the suspension of voting be extended.
That section 1.b — called Annex III in the procedures regulated by the Justice instruction — recognizes the right to be Spanish of “the sons and daughters of legal age of those Spaniards whose nationality was recognized” by the Historical Memory Law of 2007 or by section 1 of the eighth additional provision of the Memory Law of 2022 itself. According to the data provided by Foreign Affairs, in the census of August 1, which counts for the elections of the 29-N, there are 189,678 Spaniards nationalized in this way, but this figure also includes the children of those who obtained nationality through the Historical Memory Law of 2007, which is not under the scrutiny of the Supreme Court.
The Government does not have a figure of how many of those registered in the CERA have obtained nationality through the 2022 rule and how many through the 2007 rule, but the State Attorney's Office has warned that the latter are "not at all a residual group." In response to a question posed in Congress by PP deputy José Antonio Bermúdez de Castro, incorporated into the procedure followed in the Supreme Court, the Government put the total number of nationalized people under the 2007 Historical Memory Law of 2007 at 373,616 in February 2023, but there is no data on how many currently reside outside of Spain and are registered in the CERA.
Iustitia Europa and Vox demanded that the Supreme Court demand from the Government the nominal list of voters included in the census of foreigners who have acquired nationality through section 1.b of the 2022 law and to identify the parent from whom they derived their nationality and the way by which they obtained it, a measure that the Government's legal services consider "impossible to comply", as advanced in the allegations to that request registered this week in the high court. "It is impossible because that nominal relationship that is interested does not exist, and also with the added 'plus', and that for these precautionary purposes is essential, that it must be linked to its parent and with the specific way by which it acquired nationality," the Lawyers warned. According to the Government's legal services, raising this request at this point, when the electoral documentation has already been sent and "without there being possible material time before November 21 (beginning of the voting process in accordance with the provisions of article 75 of the LOREG) to carry out any type of selection, can only lead to sowing doubt about the legitimacy of the vote of these people."
