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🇵🇾 Paraguay /Crime & Justice

Spain’s Supreme Court suspends voter-register entries for descendants of exiles

From ABC Color · () Spanish

Translated from Spanish and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

Newswire Documents & data In the courts
  • Spain’s Supreme Court suspended the electoral effects of entries in the Register of Spaniards Resident Abroad made under the Democratic Memory Law.
  • The suspension will remain until consulates verify that applicants are descendants of Spaniards exiled for political, ideological, religious or sexual-orientation reasons, subject to the court’s final ruling.
  • The decision follows challenges by Iustitia Europa and Vox, which accused the government of improperly expanding nationality eligibility, allegations rejected by the governing Socialist Party.

Spain’s Supreme Court has suspended the electoral effects of new entries in the Register of Spaniards Resident Abroad, known as CERA, made under the Democratic Memory Law. The entries will remain on hold until consulates verify that those granted nationality through the process meet the legal requirement of being descendants of Spaniards exiled for political or other specified reasons.

The court partially granted precautionary measures sought by the political movement Iustitia Europa and the far-right Vox party. Both brought challenges against a decision by Spain’s Central Electoral Board, which had said on July 16 that it could not reject postal ballots from those people abroad because doing so exceeded its powers.

electoral engineering

· Spanish conservativesThey used the phrase to accuse the government of expanding the overseas voter register improperly.

The law allows children and grandchildren of Spaniards by origin to apply for Spanish nationality if they were born outside Spain and can show that a parent or grandparent was originally Spanish and suffered exile for political, ideological, religious or sexual-orientation reasons.

manufacturing voters

· Spanish conservativesThey alleged that the government was using the nationality process to influence the electoral census.

A government instruction adopted in October 2022, one week after the law took effect, said the status of exile would be presumed for Spaniards who left Spain between 1936, when the Civil War began, and 1955, 16 years after the conflict ended and during the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco. That instruction has fueled a political dispute.

Conservatives accuse the government of “electoral engineering” and “manufacturing voters” by applying the presumption to descendants of people who settled abroad during that period without necessarily leaving for the reasons specified in the law. Vox has called the nationality grants “massive,” “arbitrary” and “out of control,” and accused the government of trying to alter the electoral register and carry out electoral fraud. The Socialist Party, the senior partner in Spain’s coalition government, has firmly denied those claims.

massive

· VoxVox characterized the nationality grants in its criticism of the government’s policy.

The Supreme Court’s interim measure applies to elections held in Spain until it issues a final ruling, except where applicants can demonstrate that they are descendants of people persecuted under Franco in accordance with the law. The court also ordered the Electoral Census Office to separate registration files arising directly from the law’s exile provisions.

arbitrary

· VoxVox criticized the nationality grants as lacking proper control.
About this summary

Originally published by ABC Color in Spanish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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