The Central Electoral Board has complied with the Supreme Court order requesting a series of clarifications regarding the census of those naturalized under the grandchildren law, but without allowing “any interpretation or filling in the observed gaps” in the high court’s resolution, according to sources present at the meeting. A narrow majority of the members, seven to six, also decided not to appeal the Supreme Court order, but almost all those present questioned as an “excess” that the high court had decided to suspend the voting rights of thousands of naturalized citizens without hearing them or allowing allegations.
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The JEC resolution barely contains one page and does not elaborate on any controversial or political conclusions. It simply states that the Supreme Court’s mandate must be “complied with in its terms.” There is no further analysis or “explanatory” interpretations, despite the conservative sector of the JEC, which filed a dissenting opinion on July 16 when this issue was already addressed, trying to introduce that debate at the meeting. At that time, the vote ended with nine against taking a stance versus four in favor. This Monday, the count was eight against five.
“The majority feeling of the Board has been quite clear and is that the Supreme Court has overstepped and has cut off the fundamental right to vote of more than 400,000 Spaniards already naturalized without hearing them, without listening to them, and without allowing them to present allegations,” emphasize JEC sources. However, the members have agreed not to file an appeal because “it had no chance of success and could generate more legal uncertainty,” they point out.
The most significant discussion took place regarding the Supreme Court’s decision with a precautionary measure to suspend last week the voting rights of those already naturalized under that instruction added to the Democratic Memory law in 2022. The majority of the members present at the JEC, judges, professors, and jurists of recognized prestige, agreed that this point is more than controversial “because it restricts a fundamental right, with a firm resolution and without allowing allegations or hearing those affected.”
The Supreme Court order that prompted this special JEC meeting has generated immense political and legal uproar for suspending a fundamental right of tens of thousands of Spaniards. The Supreme Court urges breaking down the cases because it orders that the first group maintain the right to vote, while the second will lose it, at least until the court issues the final ruling on the appeals filed by Iustitia Europa and Vox against a JEC agreement by which this body declared itself incompetent to oversee the electoral effects of the grandchildren law.
In that part of the discussion, even the members of the conservative sector remained basically silent. One of those members limited himself to commenting that in Denmark, nationality granted to foreign immigrants can be revoked after a few years if they do not meet a series of requirements. Several members clarified that this can happen in Denmark because its law allows it, but they emphasized that here the law states otherwise and has not been changed. It was also pointed out in the discussion that there are several rulings from various courts concluding the obligation to hear those affected by a judicial action.
Several members of the majority sector expressed themselves harshly against the Supreme Court with expressions ranging from saying the high court’s order “makes no sense,” “they have not measured the consequences,” or even that “no jurist would think of doing something like that.”
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The representative of the National Statistics Institute (INE), who attends these JEC meetings with a voice but no vote, specified that some of the Supreme Court’s requirements will be impossible to execute or will require many months or even years and will need many people and resources to carry out. The senior INE official thus referred to the court’s mandate to break down within a few weeks the number of foreigners who have obtained nationality already under the so-called grandchildren law for reasons of political exile or others, such as economic reasons. The INE representative predicted that these demands will overwhelm the consulates even more than they are now.
The JEC resolution thus agrees, “in execution” of what the Supreme Court indicated, “to forward to the Electoral Census Office” the court orders so that its requirements are met, as well as “to the Directorate General of Spaniards Abroad and Consular Affairs to order that the Consular Registry Officers issue the corresponding certification in cases of persons who, having obtained Spanish nationality by exercising the right of option provided in Additional Provision 8.1 First Paragraph of Law 20/2022, have demonstrated their condition of being born outside Spain, of a father or mother, of a grandfather or grandmother, who were originally Spanish, and who suffered exile for political, ideological, belief, or sexual orientation and identity reasons and who have lost or renounced Spanish nationality.”
The JEC also assumes the Supreme Court’s order to break down the census registrations derived from the direct application of the exile cases included in the 2022 memory law (for political, ideological, or sexual orientation reasons), regarding those derived from the instruction approved six days later that presumes the condition of exile for all Spaniards who left the country in the hardest years of the postwar and dictatorship.
The orders from the fourth section of the Supreme Court’s Contentious-Administrative Chamber also tasked the JEC with delivering within 15 days the report that this body commissioned in July from the Electoral Census Office on the criteria by which it is determined in which municipality each new voter is registered and on how to strengthen “the objectification and homogeneity” of the rules applicable by consular offices, in order to “preserve transparency, objectivity, and equality in the electoral process.” The high court also ordered the JEC to approve within 10 days an instruction to fill in any detected gaps.
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 requested to be registered. The Supreme Court did not use that data but another slightly higher figure provided in its appeal by the association Iustitia Europa, which estimated 408,262 new registrants from the 2023 general elections until July 1, 2026. The court accepts this figure arguing that neither the Public Prosecutor’s Office nor the State Attorney’s Office have questioned it.
Neither the amendment to the grandchildren law nor the instruction with more flexible interpretative guidelines for exiles, published in the BOE, were appealed within the deadline and have been in effect for four years. The controversial instruction interpreted the legislators’ objective by setting the temporal limit for possible beneficiaries between the end of the Civil War and 1955, when Spain began joining international organizations despite still being under a dictatorship. It was the same broad political exile interpretation included in the clarifying instruction of the 2008 Democratic Memory law, which was also not appealed. Numerous PP leaders, from Manuel Fraga to Alberto Núñez Feijóo, promised during trips and campaign events with emigrants that they would facilitate nationality for “all” relatives of exiles.
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