Spain's Supreme Court halts 'Grandchildren Law' census and freezes votes

Supreme Court freezes 'Grandchildren Law' votes pending ruling

A letter recently arrived at a residents' association addressed to someone nobody knew. The episode, brought up in the thread regarding voter registration, sums up the mood with which the Supreme Court's decision has been received: the precautionary suspension of registrations in the census linked to the so-called Grandchildren Law, the Eighth Additional Provision of the Democratic Memory Law. The court has not addressed the merits of the case. It has only halted its electoral effects while the appeal is resolved.

What exactly has the Supreme Court halted?

The ruling stops the incorporation into the electoral census of newly naturalized citizens under that regulation. For those already registered in the Electoral Census of Absent Residents (CERA), their electoral effects are precautionarily frozen for upcoming elections until a final ruling is issued. The measure is not absolute: the exclusion is conditional on consulates certifying the status of descendants of exiles, which separates those files from those processed under the October 2022 instruction that relaxed the requirements. The court justifies the move by the "irreversible damage" that would occur if the merits were resolved after the elections, and warns that it does not prejudge the outcome.

The origin lies in an appeal by Iustitia Europa and Vox against the agreement of the Central Electoral Board, which is reproached for having abdicated its supervisory function by hiding behind an alleged lack of jurisdiction. The decision comes with the State Attorney's Office and the Public Prosecutor's Office aligned against it.

Who signed the instruction that peine the floodgates?

According to the account circulating in the thread, the October 2022 instruction was signed by Sofía Puente during her time as director general of Legal Security and Public Faith at the Ministry of Justice, sister of Óscar Puente. Her reading of the requirements, according to that same critical version, gave rise to a generalized presumption of exile that allowed descendants without accredited ties to actual exile to be registered. Hence the nuance now introduced by the Supreme Court: not all naturalized citizens are halted equally, only those files that deviated from the law through that interpretative path.

Nationalities granted and the postal vote battle

One of the most repeated objections points to the limits of the decision: nationalizations already granted are not revoked, only their electoral effect is withdrawn. Some demand going further and reviewing the ID cards issued or benefits collected from abroad by people registered here, although none of those suspicions is supported by data in the available material and they are formulated as suspicion, not as proven fact.

In parallel, reform proposals are circulating: replicating the Italian model, with a specific constituency for residents abroad and fewer seats, voting at the embassy, or eliminating postal voting. Regarding the latter, Germany is attributed a massive rigging in postal voting without providing any proof. It is an unsupported claim, and as such it should be left.

The surprising fact

The fine print includes an uncomfortable detail: both the State Attorney's Office and the Public Prosecutor's Office opposed the precautionary halt requested before the Supreme Court. The merits of the case remain open and the final ruling has no date yet.

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Notice: this is a precautionary ruling on an ongoing judicial proceeding.