Spain grants citizenship to a 93-year-old Mexican with no Spanish parents or grandparents
Spain's Government has granted citizenship to a 93-year-old Mexican who claimed a great-grandfather born in Burgos in 1821, outside the scope of the grandchildren law. The electoral roll, in…
English · Original discussion in Spanish · Published
Spain grants citizenship to a 93-year-old Mexican based on a great-grandfather born in 1821
Can a great-grandfather born in Burgos in 1821 turn his Mexican great-grandson, 93 years later, into a Spanish citizen? On paper, the so-called grandchildren law does not cover great-grandchildren. In practice, according to information circulating these days, the Government has granted citizenship to a 93-year-old Mexican who claimed exactly that: that his great-grandfather was born in Burgos in 1821. No Spanish parents or grandparents. The great-grandfather, and that's it.
The case has lit a fuse that had been lying there for a while. Because behind a single file there is usually a whole family waiting its turn, and because the electoral roll is not an abstraction: it is votes. The discussion, far from staying administrative, quickly turned to electoral rigging, voter fraud and the suspicion that the roll is being deliberately inflated.
What the grandchildren law says and why the great-grandson should not qualify
The law is designed for grandchildren of Spaniards, not great-grandchildren. The beneficiary, however, based his application on an ancestor born in 1821 in Burgos, two generations further back than the law contemplates. It is the kind of detail a civil servant with the stamp in hand should have spotted.
Some argue that the file was approved without much scrutiny and that the signature that approved it deserves an investigation for misconduct. Against that weighs the argument that an isolated case proves nothing: administrative errors exist and get corrected. The problem is when the error stops being the exception and becomes the pattern.
The electoral roll as a battleground
The discussion is not only legal. It is arithmetic. With **600 million Spanish speakers** on the other side of the Atlantic, the temptation to add ballots is obvious to anyone who does the math. And that is where the debate comes in over whether these citizenship grants trinc a legal criterion or a roll-stacking strategy.
The suspicion has spread to other fronts: there has been talk of postal votes with expired passports and documents without photos in Buenos Aires, the epicentre of the grandchildren law. None of that has been proven as organised fraud, but the accumulation of red flags feeds distrust. And distrust, in electoral matters, is an asset that is destroyed quickly and recovered very slowly.
In the end, the question is not whether a 93-year-old man is going to go and vote. He will not. The question is who will put the envelope in the ballot box for him, and whether anyone will check. Dry irony: with this level of rigour, it almost does not matter who governs; what is scary is who counts.
Can a great-grandfather born in Burgos in 1821 turn his Mexican great-grandson, 93 years later, into a Spanish citizen? On paper, the so-called grandchildren law does not cover great-grandchildren. In practice, according to information circulating these days, the Government has granted citizenship to a 93-year-old Mexican who claimed exactly that: that his great-grandfather was born in Burgos in 1821. No Spanish parents or grandparents. The great-grandfather, and that's it.
The case has lit a fuse that had been lying there for a while. Because behind a single file there is usually a whole family waiting its turn, and because the electoral roll is not an abstraction: it is votes. The discussion, far from staying administrative, quickly turned to electoral rigging, voter fraud and the suspicion that the roll is being deliberately inflated.
What the grandchildren law says and why the great-grandson should not qualify
The law is designed for grandchildren of Spaniards, not great-grandchildren. The beneficiary, however, based his application on an ancestor born in 1821 in Burgos, two generations further back than the law contemplates. It is the kind of detail a civil servant with the stamp in hand should have spotted.
Some argue that the file was approved without much scrutiny and that the signature that approved it deserves an investigation for misconduct. Against that weighs the argument that an isolated case proves nothing: administrative errors exist and get corrected. The problem is when the error stops being the exception and becomes the pattern.
The electoral roll as a battleground
The discussion is not only legal. It is arithmetic. With **600 million Spanish speakers** on the other side of the Atlantic, the temptation to add ballots is obvious to anyone who does the math. And that is where the debate comes in over whether these citizenship grants trinc a legal criterion or a roll-stacking strategy.
The suspicion has spread to other fronts: there has been talk of postal votes with expired passports and documents without photos in Buenos Aires, the epicentre of the grandchildren law. None of that has been proven as organised fraud, but the accumulation of red flags feeds distrust. And distrust, in electoral matters, is an asset that is destroyed quickly and recovered very slowly.
In the end, the question is not whether a 93-year-old man is going to go and vote. He will not. The question is who will put the envelope in the ballot box for him, and whether anyone will check. Dry irony: with this level of rigour, it almost does not matter who governs; what is scary is who counts.
Summary of a discussion on Burbuja.info - Foro de economía, actualidad y política., translated from Spanish and reviewed before publication. Read the full discussion (37 replies).
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