The Abogacía del Estado has positioned itself before the Tribunal Supremo against the demand by Vox and the party Iustitia Europa to disenfranchise around 190,000 descendants of victims of Francoist repression in the parliamentary elections on 29 November 2026 In their submissions, the State Legal Service warns that such a move would overwhelm consulates and would chiefly serve to call into question the legitimacy of this group’s votes.
Specifically, the applications by Vox and Iustitia Europa target people listed in Annex III to an instruction issued in 2022 by the Ministerio de Justicia According to official figures, these are 189,578 adult children of people who acquired Spanish nationality either under the first memory legislation passed in 2007 or under the provision introduced in 2022 known as the Ley de nietos No separate proof of exile is required for this group, since their entitlement derives from a parent who has already been naturalised.
The Abogacía del Estado argues that there are no final rulings that call the legality of these naturalisations into question across the board. In its view, a blanket removal from the overseas electoral register would be ineffective in practical terms and would disproportionately restrict the fundamental right to political participation. The State’s legal services warn of a risk that consular processes could be blocked shortly before election day and point to the constitutional importance of the right to vote.
The background is a dispute over how to interpret the Ministry of Justice’s 2022 published instruction on applying the Ley de nietos. That interpretation has been challenged before the Tribunal Supremo. Meanwhile, a second judge recently dismissed a criminal complaint which, like another case still pending, was directed against the author of that instruction. The related criminal-law assessment therefore remains inconsistent; the Supreme Court, however, will decide the electoral issue as part of the administrative proceedings.
Vox and Iustitia Europa justify their move by citing doubts about the legality of entries on the electoral registers. The opposing side counters that the aim is not to clarify the issue, but to discredit a precisely defined group of new Spaniards. It is unclear when the Tribunal Supremo will rule on the applications now before it. What is clear is that extending the removals would affect tens of thousands of families, have implications for naturalisation practice and could undermine trust in the conduct of overseas elections.
Editor: Phillipe Schmidt-Araguin (Article created with AI assistance).