Spain's Supreme Court suspends voting rights for Grandchildren Law recipients abroad

Precautionary suspension of voting rights

On 8 September 2026, the Administrative Chamber of Spain's Supreme Court approved a precautionary suspension of electoral registration for citizens who obtained Spanish nationality under the Democratic Memory Law, commonly known as the Grandchildren Law. The ruling partially upholds requests submitted by the political party Vox and the legal platform Iustitia Europa against a 16 July resolution from the Central Electoral Board. Under the decision, individuals naturalised through the law will not be added to the foreign voter register, known as the Censo Electoral de Residentes Ausentes (CERA). For those already entered into the roll, their voting rights in upcoming elections remain suspended until the court issues a definitive ruling on the merits of the case.

Exemptions for certified descendants of exiles

The high court clarified that the precautionary order does not revoke or annul any granted Spanish nationalities, nor does it halt the ongoing administrative processing of citizenship files. Applicants will continue their administrative procedures to completion, but their electoral incorporation will remain on hold once the citizenship file is finalised. The court created a specific exemption for applicants who hold consular certificates verifying that their parents or grandparents were original Spanish citizens who suffered exile due to political, ideological, religious, or sexual orientation persecution. Those who can formally document that their forebears lost or renounced Spanish nationality because of exile retain their full electoral participation rights.

Opposition from state prosecutors and government attorneys

The decision followed a public hearing conducted on 7 September 2026, during which both the Public Prosecutor's Office and the State Attorney's Office, representing the government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, opposed freezing CERA registrations. The state attorney argued that the Central Electoral Board agreement was not subject to appeal and requested the outright dismissal of the petition. The prosecution argued that voter registration is an automatic statutory right resulting from nationality and warned against converting the Electoral Census Office into an administrative reviewer of granted citizenship.

The prosecutor addressed the scope of the legal challenge during Monday's court hearing.

What is intended is to turn the OCE into a registrar that qualifies legal acts, in this case nationality, and says that it cannot access the census.

Surging registration numbers and court division

Appellants Vox and Iustitia Europa argued that failing to freeze new voter additions would cause irreversible damage to future democratic contests because cast ballots cannot be annulled after an election. During the hearing, Vox lawyer and Member of the European Parliament Jorge Buxadé reported that foreign registrations reached 29,000 entries across a sixty-day period, surpassing official expectations that ranged between 10,000 and 16,000 monthly additions. The ruling was adopted by the chamber with one dissenting opinion among its six sitting magistrates, with the formal written rulings scheduled for delivery in the coming days.