How can the increase of voters abroad in the Islands influence?

PalmaThe census of absent resident voters (CERA) has grown considerably since October 2022, when the instruction regulating naturalizations through the Democratic Memory Law came into effect. Specifically, in the Balearic Islands, the increase has been 27%. Given this, the Supreme Court has acceded to the claims of Vox and Iustitia Europa and has temporarily blocked the right to vote for a portion of the people who have obtained nationality through this route. But the truth is that the votes of those registered in the CERA are a small percentage of the total. In the last general elections of 2023, they represented 0.84% of the country as a whole, and 0.46% of the Islands. How do these changes to the census affect things in practice?

27% more in three years

The CERA of the Islands grows more than the national average

According to data from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, since the additional provision to the Democratic Memory Law known as the Grandchildren Law was approved until May 2026, the State's consular network received 1,225,188 applications to benefit from it, and 571,761 were approved. Of these, a portion requested to register with the CERA to vote. In this census, an increase of 460,111 voters is observed –according to data from the National Statistics Institute (INE)– since October 2022. It has gone from 2,287,889 voters to 2,748,000: 20% more than three years ago. In the Balearic Islands, this rise has been even greater. Those registered in the CERA have gone from 31,965 in October 2022 to 40,623 currently, with an increase of 8,658 voters, which represents 27% more.

However, participation data have been historically low. In the 2023 general elections, only 10% of voters abroad voted, and the percentage was lower in the Islands: 7.25%. “The vast majority of people who have acquired Spanish nationality through the Grandchildren Law do not do so because they are thinking of voting for a political party, but to have a Spanish passport,” explains political scientist Guillermo Bezzina.

The key to the controversy

An administrative instruction questioned by the Supreme Court

The Supreme Court's resolution does not question the Memory Law, which offers nationality to the descendants of people who fled Spain due to the dictatorship, but rather the instruction that regulates its mechanism. Through this law, they were allowed to obtain a passport and census registration without having to document the political persecution of their grandparents, provided they had left Spain between the years 1936 and 1955. The Supreme Court considers that an “exceptional increase” in census registrations, many of which without individual verification of exile, poses a “fundamental, real, and serious danger” to the legitimacy of electoral processes. For this reason, it temporarily paralyzed the electoral rights of people who had not provided documentary proof of repression.

The Minister of the Presidency and Justice, Félix Bolaños, lashed out at the Supreme Court's resolution. “It is highly questionable legally,” he said. Consulted by ARABalears, Public Law expert Sebastià Rubí is critical of the fact that the Supreme Court is temporarily suspending an already acquired right: “You cannot deny a Spanish citizen the right to vote.” “If there is disagreement with the way nationality is decided, it must be studied through a procedure that analyzes it on a case-by-case basis,” he adds. He considers that voters could take the matter to the Constitutional Court with an appeal for constitutional protection (recurso de amparo): “They have papers stating that they are Spanish.”

Could it affect the Balearic Islands?

The Mapau case: vote buying by the People's Party

Vox spokesperson in Parliament, Manuela Cañadas, supported last Tuesday her party's thesis that the increase in CERA registrations threatens to affect election results. "In the Balearic Islands, we have seen elections decided by a few hundred votes," she argued. She also accused the PSOE of intending to alter the census for electoral purposes: "Spanish nationality cannot be used as an electoral tool: the census does not belong to the PSOE or Pedro Sánchez."

Could these 8,658 new voters who only participate in regional and general elections alter the balance of power in the Balearic Parliament to benefit a specific party? According to experts consulted by ARABalears, hardly. Although in the Islands there are seats decided by few votes, such as that of Formentera, legislation requires applicants to register in the municipality of origin of their ancestors. This prevents the artificial concentration of the census in a critical territory, in which a small number of votes could tip a seat.

Bezzina recalls the well-known Mapau case, when the PP Government orchestrated the recruitment of emigrants in Argentina and Uruguay to fraudulently register them in Formentera and thus obtain the island's key deputy in 1999. That case, he warns, "has nothing to do" with the current one. On one hand, because voters were registered without ties to Formentera and, on the other, because "they were trying to get them to vote in exchange for benefits."

“Normally, the impact of the CERA vote is insignificant, among other issues because participation is very low,” the expert explains. However, he believes that the controversy over the Grandchildren's Law adds to a deeper debate about whether “one should vote based on nationality or residence.” “Why can the grandchildren of people who emigrated vote, while those who have lived in the Islands for 20 or 30 years, but do not have nationality, cannot?” he asks. For her part, political scientist and expert on the far-right Anna Isabel López warns that questioning election results is a strategy “characteristic of different radical right-wing movements, which above all have a reference point in Donald Trump in the United States.” “Calling into question the census or the legitimacy of the electoral process can erode a basic pillar of democracy: accepting the election result,” she concludes.