News · Migration
Spain's Supreme Court keeps the vote for 189,678 children of citizens naturalised under the Grandchildren Law
The court on Monday rejected extending to descendants the suspension of the overseas vote imposed on their parents, a decision affecting close to 190,000 citizens, among them Cubans, ahead of the 29 November general election.
Spain's Supreme Court on Monday 9 November rejected a request to suspend the voting rights of the children of people naturalised under the so-called Grandchildren Law, according to a report by the EFE news agency carried by Periódico Cubano. The ruling will allow them to keep taking part in the general election set for 29 November.
The request was filed by the Vox party and the organisation Iustitia Europa, which sought to extend to descendants a suspension of the overseas vote previously imposed on their parents. The Fourth Section of the Administrative Chamber dismissed it, holding that altering the electoral roll at this stage would undermine legal certainty and the stability of the process: the judges noted that the request arrived once more than half of the electoral calendar had elapsed, with barely a week to the start of the campaign.
The court also weighed the administrative difficulty of reviewing the records of 189,678 citizens. The State Attorney's Office had opposed the extension, warning that identifying those potentially affected one by one would cause operational problems at consulates and during the count. The ruling drew the dissent of one of the six judges and a concurring opinion from another member of the court, who backed the decision while questioning part of its reasoning.
The decision does not alter the restrictions affecting more than 163,000 people naturalised under the Grandchildren Law: the Supreme Court also rejected the petitions filed to lift that suspension. According to the published report, only 901 of those affected had proved to consulates that they are descendants of exiles, the requirement that will allow them to vote.
The dispute matters particularly to Cubans who obtained or applied for Spanish citizenship under the Democratic Memory Law: up to the first half of 2025, Spain's Consulate General in Havana had received more than 107,000 citizenship applications through that route. The court-ordered restrictions affect voting from abroad through the Electoral Roll of Absent Residents and do not entail the loss of Spanish nationality or the cancellation of passports already issued, nor do they prevent citizens resident and registered in Spain from voting.
Diario de Cuba likewise reported that the ruling opens the way for descendants of emigrants naturalised in Cuba to exercise their right to vote. The Supreme Court has yet to rule on the substance of the contested naturalisations, which it will decide after election day.
Sources: Periódico Cubano · Diario de Cuba
Data updated: 2026-11-10T04:15:00.000Z