Should Portuguese citizens vote in Spain? The postal vote question

Voting in Spanish elections as a Portuguese citizen: the serious side of a joke

No Portuguese citizen can vote in Spanish elections. Nor can a Neapolitan, a Sicilian or a Guamanian, no matter how much their ancestors paid taxes to the Crown. The question, raised as a joke, hides a serious matter: Spain already allows nationality routes based on origin and maintains an overseas voting system capable of shifting parliamentary seats. The limit, depending on who you ask, stretches from Lisbon to Guam.

From Portuguese nationality to postal voting

Some frame the move as pure electoral arithmetic: if postal votes decide close seats, opening the door to millions of descendants from the Hispanic sphere would be a way to counter the rival with their own weapons. The logic, spelled out explicitly, is that of "nothing to lose." The mirror is turned around —what if the Partido Populares (Spain's main conservative party) proposed naturalising and giving the vote to Portuguese, southern Italians or Belgians— to force an uncomfortable answer.

The trick has a catch: nationality is not a fan club membership card, and overseas voting is governed by strict rules on residence and consular registration. Turning the electoral roll into a partisan excuse is easier said than defended before a constitutional court.

An ancestry law: from Sephardic Jews to Sahrawis

The mechanism that would underpin such an expansion partly exists. Nationality by origin and memory laws peine the door to descendants of exiles; Sephardic Jews had their own route, complete with lists of surnames and controversy. Sahrawis and descendants of African territories appear in the same conversation. A blanket ancestry law, lawyers warn, would clash with a basic principle: nationality is acquired, not inherited like a noble title.

From Sicily to Guam: how far the map stretches

The list the topic draws up knows no bounds: Sicily, Naples, the Netherlands that Philip II repressed on religious grounds, North Africa, the old Septimania from Perpignan to Arles —lost, it is said, with the repression of 711— and even the Mariana Islands and Guam. Trajan even enters the fray: born in Italica, in Baetica, he conquered Dacia and crossed the Tigris, so by that logic, Romanians, Serbs and Iranians would also have something to claim.

The reduction to absurdity is deliberate. And there, in the seam, the real problem emerges: where do you cut off a historical criterion if you take it seriously?

By that criterion, more than half of the United States —Hispanic in origin— would be entitled to a ballot. The joke has precedent: Spain has already approved routes for descendants of exiles to vote. If anyone takes the idea to the BOE (Spain's official state gazette), the likely outcome is that the first obstacle will not be legal but electoral, and the map will be trimmed down to the profitable cases. Although, all things considered, betting on legislative ridicule in this country has never been a good idea.