A 29 November election has forced Spain’s Supreme Court to revisit the CERA registrations of new citizens. Keeping the suspension could block voters, while lifting it could expose the result to a legal challenge.
On 10 September, Spain’s Supreme Court suspended additions to the CERA register. The judges must now decide whether to maintain that measure or restore voting rights before the 29N election. Either route carries a legal risk identified in the original order.
The dispute concerns new Spanish citizens who obtained nationality under the «ley de nietos». The court acted after applications from Iustitia Europa and Vox. Both groups had previously taken the issue to the Junta Electoral Central without success.
On 6 October 2026, the Supreme Court gave the parties an unextendable 48-hour deadline to submit arguments, expiring at 15:00 on 8 October.
The original order came when there was enough time to examine the registrations before a future electoral process. Its purpose was to identify people who might have obtained nationality irregularly and therefore might not have the right to vote. The judges were concerned about electoral transparency if those registrations were used before the underlying legal challenge had been resolved.
At the centre of the case is an instruction from the Ministerio de Justicia developed under the Ley de Memoria Democrática. It allows descendants of exiles to seek Spanish nationality while presuming that anyone who left Spain between 1936 and 1955 did so for political or ideological reasons. Descendants do not have to provide documentary proof of exile under that presumption. That mechanism prompted the Supreme Court to examine the CERA entries more closely.
The election timetable has now run ahead of the court’s precaution. The official parliamentary election date, 29 November, has pushed the proceedings into an urgent phase. According to the Consejo General del Poder Judicial, the court is considering the State Attorney’s appeal against the September measure alongside fresh requests from Iustitia Europa and Vox after the election was called.
The court has expanded the procedural question beyond the original suspension. It has asked the parties to address how two groups should be notified and allowed to participate: people who obtained nationality under the «ley de nietos» but have not yet been entered in CERA, and voters who are already registered. The Supreme Court intends to address the appeal, the new requests and the status of these affected voters in a single ruling.
Before the election was called for 29N, the Administration acknowledged that reviewing almost 170,000 files individually by 1 January was not feasible. That figure has since fallen to 163,000. The State Attorney’s Office has gone further, arguing that completing the review within the available period is materially impossible.
That leaves the judges with two damaging alternatives. Keeping the suspension would prevent tens of thousands of people who have already acquired Spanish nationality through the «ley de nietos» from exercising their active voting and political participation rights. The Fiscalía opposes that course. Affected voters could eventually take the dispute to the Tribunal Constitucional through applications for constitutional protection.
Removing the suspension would allow people whose registrations are under suspicion to vote before the Supreme Court rules on the legality of the Ministerio de Justicia instruction. Iustitia Europa has already warned about that risk and appears ready to challenge the election results if those registrations are used. An earlier analysis examined the wider campaign pressure created by the early vote.
Ending the suspension would not necessarily end the review. Iustitia Europa has asked the court to order the Junta Electoral Central and the Oficina del Censo Electoral to identify every vote linked to the 163,000 records. That would preserve the possibility of checking whether irregular votes were cast if the instruction is later declared unlawful. The review would take months, so it would have no practical effect on the election result.
The case has reached a legal dead end. A continued suspension risks excluding citizens from an election, while lifting it risks validating votes tied to a rule the court may later annul. With electoral deadlines approaching and no affected person currently joined to the Supreme Court proceedings, either decision will leave one side arguing that the vote was restricted or insufficiently protected. The CGPJ’s 6 October notice confirmed this new procedural stage; it did not report a final decision restoring registration or definitively maintaining the suspension.
