Spain's Supreme Court bars 163,020 from voting in Nov 29 election

Supreme Court denies vote to 163,020 naturalized under 'Grandchildren Law'

An unamendable census. The Spanish Supreme Court has rejected appeals by the State Attorney General and the Prosecutor's Office, maintaining the precautionary suspension of voting rights for descendants of exiles who obtained nationality under the Democratic Memory Law. The official figure provided by the government to the high court: 163,020 affected people. The valid census for the general elections on November 29 is the one closed on August 1, leaving no material margin for review.

The decision comes as the calendar tightens. The fourth section of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber notified its order during the October 12 holiday, after closing deliberations over the weekend. Five of the six judges debating the appeal voted to maintain the suspension: Luis María Díez-Picazo, Antonio Jesús Fonseca-Herrero, José Luis Requero, Manuel Delgado-Iribarren and Antonio Narváez. The sixth, Alicia Millán, signed a dissenting opinion.

What the order says about voting rights

The majority's central argument is that the right to vote «is not an absolute right» and is «subject to general interests». Among these interests, the court places «the preservation of the truthfulness and absence of irregularities in the electoral census, which must prevail over the citizen's private interest». In short: before anyone votes, the Supreme Court wants guarantees that the census is not contaminated.

The State Attorney General had warned otherwise. In their appeal, they argued that maintaining the suspension abusa a fundamental right and that, given the timelines of the LOREG (General Electoral System Organic Law), «the scheme of suspension, review, and recovery of electoral effects becomes impossible, resulting in the full and irreversible deprivation of active suffrage». The Prosecutor's Office supported this thesis: faced with the risk of immediate sacrifice of a fundamental right, the exercise of the right to participate should take precedence.

Dissenting opinion highlights electoral timeline

Judge Alicia Millán already disagreed when the initial suspension of voting was agreed upon on September 8, and she has repeated her stance now. Her thesis: the call for elections on November 29 «introduced a new and decisive element» into the procedure because it makes any potential injury to the right to vote «irreversible». «Under such circumstances, the preservation of the effective exercise of the fundamental right to political participation should prevail over maintaining a provisional measure based on a legal controversy still pending final resolution», she wrote.

In addition to dismissing the State Attorney General's appeal, the Supreme Court orders the publication of its decision in the Single Judicial Edict Board and the BOE (Official Gazette) «with the greatest urgency» so that those affected can appear in the proceedings, granting them five days to submit allegations.

Why the November 29 census cannot be changed

The core of the matter is logistical, not ideological. According to Article 39.2 of the General Electoral System Organic Law, the census must be available since Monday, October 12, for town halls and consulates to display it for public consultation for eight days. Claims are resolved before October 23, the date of final publication. From then on, the census is immovable.

The Directorate-General for Consular Affairs had already warned in writing, even before the early elections, that it was «materially impossible» to distinguish between those naturalized under the law and those naturalized under the Ministry of Justice instruction prior to January 1, 2027. That instruction presumes exile status for all Spaniards who left the country between July 18, 1936, and December 31, 1955, and the Supreme Court considers it non-compliant with the law. The judges wanted to limit the suspension only to those naturalized through that route, but the breakdown does not exist.

The fraud the Supreme Court sought to prevent

The original suspension, requested by Iustitia Europa and Vox, relied on a «well-founded, real and serious danger» that the election result would be altered by irregular registrations in the Census of Resident Absentees (CERA). The increase in CERA derived from the 'Grandchildren Law' is the magnitude at the center of the litigation.

The case of the Soria village cited in this context is illustrative: four times more CERA voters than registered residents, with grandparents said to have emigrated in 1844 according to records. Those defending the suspension argue that the legal fraud lay in the application of the norm, not in the norm itself.

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With these elements, November 29 will be held with 163,020 people holding Spanish ID cards who will not be able to cast a ballot. The Supreme Court has closed the door on a precautionary basis. The open question—which no order resolves—is what happens when the merits of the case are decided and the census is already a completed electoral history.