The 'grandchildren law' was neither challenged nor questioned by the Electoral Board

There is no "grandchildren's law." This is an unquestionable truth amid the torrent of accusations made by the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, regarding the directive concerning the naturalization of grandchildren of those exiled by the dictatorship, which forms part of the Democratic Memory Law. But this so-called grandchildren's law is not illegal, because it is in force, having been approved by the Cortes after 32 parliamentary stages and published in the Official State Gazette (BOE) since 2022, nor can it be challenged within any applicable deadline, nor has the Central Electoral Board (JEC) questioned it, having rejected the challenges brought by one of its members by nine votes to four. This controversial directive that is now the focus of PP attacks allowed the benefits of naturalization to be extended to many more people than those exiled by the dictatorship — precisely what the Galician members of the PP had historically called for, and what Feijóo included in his electoral program for the 2023 general elections.

The PP leader used a large part of his last appearance to take stock of the political season, last Wednesday, to once again attack this directive from the Directorate General of Legal Security and Public Records of the Ministry of Justice, which was published in the BOE on October 26, 2022, with the aim of clarifying possible doubts among those in charge of Civil Registry Offices regarding those who qualify for the extraordinary naturalizations promised by the 2021 Democratic Memory Law. Feijóo accused the directive of having been "manipulated" to grant nationality to "grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren," and labeled it "fully illegal" on the basis of a dissenting opinion from a PP-nominated representative on the JEC who was defeated by nine votes to four. The scope of both the law and the directive only extends, to begin with, to the grandchildren of those exiles.

Feijóo thus took the opportunity to reiterate that the PP had called on the Government to repeal the rule and to announce a draft reform of the Civil Code that would balance "rights and obligations" and promote "effective and affective ties" when regulating naturalizations, since he believes that a Spanish passport cannot be handed out through such "social engineering." The Government maintains that the PP has made no such request to either the Ministry of Justice or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the departments with responsibility in this area. Government sources confirmed that the law and the directive have been in force for four years, without the party having filed any legal challenge at the time, and noted that the deadline to do so expired long ago — something the Electoral Board confirms.

At the JEC (Central Electoral Board), some of Feijóo's positions and those of several of his collaborators were received with a degree of incredulity. The Board met last Thursday, in response to written submissions from Vox and the trade union CSIF, to rule unanimously among its 13 members that the current electoral census of foreign nationals has been applied since 2011 without problems or complaints. The body responsible for overseeing the integrity of electoral processes requested clarifying reports from the Census Office regarding the criteria for assigning those voters to a specific Spanish municipality. It resolved by nine votes to four that it has no competence whatsoever to assess either the laws or the instructions approved by Parliament. The report on the allocation of votes to municipalities will be requested from the National Statistics Institute (INE), which has a non-voting member on the JEC, and will be produced after the summer. On that point, which remains a fixation for Vox, the People's Party is now staying silent.

The debate at the JEC centred on the issue of the nationalisation of the grandchildren of exiles, and the majority of this state advisory body, composed of experts and magistrates, ruled: "In this regard, it should be recalled that it falls outside the competences of the Central Electoral Board to rule on the circumstances that allow for the granting of nationality and its procedure. Equally, it is not within this body's remit to make assessments of laws and regulatory provisions implementing them, and the appropriate procedural channels before the Constitutional Court or the administrative courts should be used, where applicable, to bring the claims that parties wish to assert in this regard."

One member of the JEC, Carlos Vidal, submitted a dissenting opinion to which three other representatives adhered, arguing that the instruction issued by the Ministry of Justice goes beyond what is defined by the Memory Law and maintaining that the body should indeed be able to express a view on the matter. This dissenting opinion, to which the PP is now clinging, contests the fact that the aforementioned ministerial instruction begins by presuming that all the thousands of Spaniards who left Spain between 18 July 1936 and 31 December 1955 were exiles — something that might seem logical given those early years following the war and under the dictatorship. But above all, it rejects the expansion of potential beneficiaries. The Memory Law defined this section as follows: "Those born outside Spain to a father or mother, grandfather or grandmother, who had originally been Spanish nationals and who, as a consequence of having suffered exile for political, ideological or beliefs-based reasons or on grounds of sexual orientation and identity, had lost or renounced Spanish nationality, may opt for Spanish nationality, for the purposes of Article 20 of the Civil Code." The Justice Ministry's instruction of 2022 interpreted this paragraph as in fact referring to two categories of nationalisation: "Those born outside Spain to a father or mother, grandfather or grandmother, who had originally been Spanish nationals," as well as all descendants of exiles who had lost that nationality under the dictatorship.

The member designated by the PP for the JEC concluded: "What was conceived for a few tens of thousands of people was extended to anyone who had left Spain (for example, for economic reasons), and the possibility of obtaining nationality was broadened to anyone who was a descendant of someone who 'had originally been Spanish,' regardless of the cause of the loss of nationality or departure, thus expanding it to hundreds of thousands of people, contrary to the will of the legislature."

That position, which disputes the sweeping scope of those naturalizations and which Feijóo and even the Galician PP of Alfonso Rueda now consider too flexible, was not the stance that the conservatives in that region had historically defended since the days and trips to Argentina of Manuel Fraga, nor what Feijóo himself promised to extend to all Galician emigrants in 2022 and included in his 2023 electoral platform. The very member nominated by the PP on the JEC acknowledged on Thursday during the meeting before his colleagues that the PP and the PSOE have in the recent past fallen into "contradictions and inconsistencies" on that matter, in political promises and non-binding motions presented by the conservatives in the Cortes demanding that broad-minded approach which the Socialists at the time rejected.

There was debate, as that representative reflects in his dissenting vote. Some members of the majority bloc expressed certain reservations about that internal Justice Ministry instruction aimed at facilitating the work of consulates and the Civil Registry. But the majority of its members confirmed that such a discussion fell outside their jurisdiction, that Parliament had ratified that law, and that no one with standing had challenged it. Vox has now announced an appeal, but against the JEC's resolution, and on a different matter — that of endorsing the current electoral roll. That initiative could theoretically reach the Supreme Court.

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