The ghost of a possible electoral fraud that the PP, Vox, and other far-right extra-parliamentary groups have been fueling for months received a boost this Thursday that few expected a few weeks ago. The arguments used by the Supreme Court to justify the suspension of the right to vote for those naturalized under the grandchildren law support the opposition’s thesis to the point of justifying the restriction of a fundamental right due to a “founded, real, and serious danger” that an “extraordinary increase” in the Electoral Census of Absent Residents (CERA) will alter “the result desired by the Spanish people” in future elections.
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The five magistrates of the fourth section of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber who agreed on this measure focus on the growth experienced in recent years in the census of voters residing abroad. According to government data, as of May 31, 333,696 people naturalized under the grandchildren law are already registered in the census, while another 238,065 new Spaniards have applied to be registered.
The Supreme Court does not use that figure but another slightly higher one provided in its appeal by Iustitia Europa, which estimated 408,262 new registered voters from the 2023 general elections until July 1, 2026. The court accepts this figure on the grounds that neither the Public Prosecutor’s Office nor the State Attorney’s Office has questioned it and cites the electoral districts of Madrid, with 115,572 more voters, or Barcelona, with 43,439 newly registered voters, which, according to the chamber, “reveal an exceptional increase in voters registered in the CERA, which had not occurred previously.”
The court’s narrative, which warns that this already consolidated increase is compounded by “the circumstance that such a number is constantly growing,” paints the picture of an out-of-control electoral census that requires the adoption of a precautionary measure as exceptional as withdrawing the right to vote from those naturalized under the grandchildren law. Otherwise, the judges argue, it could “affect the transparency of the electoral process and citizens’ confidence in its results, as well as generate a founded circumstance of uncertainty about the electoral outcome.”
In addition to advancing the appeals filed by Vox and Iustitia Europa, the high court’s decision gives wings to the PP’s theses, which last July launched a political offensive against the grandchildren law, with Alberto Núñez Feijóo accusing the government of intending to “manufacture new voters” with the “electoral engineering” built by this law. “Nothing Sánchez does is naive,” argued the PP leader, with the thesis that the president wanted to approve this law not to grant this prerogative to the grandchildren of exiles merely by their condition, but to “manufacture new voters” by increasing the number of people with the right to vote.
It was adding fuel to the fire. In a letter addressed to 90,000 poll workers, proxies, and members, the Madrid PP had already raised a similar idea: “We face a PSOE, led by Pedro Sánchez, whose record forces us to be more vigilant than ever. They are capable of anything,” the letter stated, explaining that “the recent mass regularization and naturalization processes will substantially alter the census.” The letter was signed by the secretary general, Alfonso Serrano, the deputy secretary of organization, Ana Millán, and the secretary of electoral agents, Juan Peña.
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Although the PP has done some balancing to later defend that, deep down, the party was indeed in favor of granting nationality to the descendants of Spanish emigrants “with transparency, documentary rigor, and based on technical criteria,” the truth is that the party has been influenced by the far-right discourse about insinuations of electoral fraud. In fact, last June, Vox presented a motion to the plenary to reform the rules governing postal voting based on a premise stated by its deputy Ignacio Hoces: “Sánchez is responsible for the possible biggest electoral fraud of the 78 regime.”
After the Supreme Court’s decision, the PP has resumed the harsher discourse, with insinuations of electoral fraud, in the midst of a battle with Vox to capitalize on the high court’s setback. The PP’s Deputy Secretary of Sectoral Coordination, Alma Ezcurra, who internally led the fight on this issue, defended that the government intended “with complete shamelessness to alter the general elections so that Sánchez would perpetuate himself in power,” but “has encountered a functioning rule of law.”
Only one of the six members of the chamber who studied the case, magistrate Alicia Millán, opposed the solution agreed upon by the majority of the court. This judge, who joined the high court in February last year, considers that her colleagues have not “properly weighed” the interests at stake by opting to deprive tens of thousands of citizens of “one of the most relevant effects inherent to the recognition of Spanish nationality: participation in electoral processes under the terms established by law.”
Doubts about the high court’s decision have also been fueled by the predominantly conservative composition of the chamber that agreed on it, including magistrates who actively participated in the protest against the government’s legal reforms held outside the Supreme Court in June 2025, such as José Luis Requero. The rapporteur of the rulings, Antonio Narváez, a career prosecutor and former magistrate of the Constitutional Court, participated in a dinner with the PP leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, held on April 18 at the Claridge Hotel in Madrid with about fifty prosecutors linked to the majority association, which has a conservative tendency. At that meeting, according to various sources consulted at the time by EL PAÍS, Narváez even expressed his personal wish that Feijóo become president of the government and cast doubt on the electoral processes in which the company Indra is involved.