Thursday, 1 November 2018

The Municipal and European Elections. May 2019




















This is the release from the INE regarding the local and European elections of May 26th 2019. It says that EU citizens over the age of 18 can vote in these elections if they ask to do so. They have until 30th January 2019 to claim this right (which they can do in their town hall - assuming they are registered on the padrón).
The Oficina del Censo Electoral will be sending out letters to the 575,072 Europeans resident in Spain who had not already (previously) asked for the right to vote in municipal and European elections. One can also fill out a form to register to vote by going to https://sede.ine.gob.es (here). It is accepted and assumed that theses residents will not be voting in the European elections in their own countries.
To date, 407,784 foreign Europeans are currently registered as being able to vote.
'Although the United Kingdom has shown its intention to leave the EU on March 30th 2019, the Spanish Census office has not removed Britons from the census for these elections', says the document, 'however, their inclusion will no longer have effect once the UK leaves the EU'.
It is, indeed, as we expected (and reported in Business over Tapas).
The above document and explanation are for EU citizens only. Spain also has some bilateral agreements with non EU countries, including Norway and (for some reason) New Zealand.
The document does however NOT make clear the Britons resident in Spain who are candidates in local elections or who appear on electoral lists. To prepare for the local elections, it is evidently necessary that the parties prepare their candidacies in good time. It would be odd to suddenly pull candidates from local lists just two months before an election. The Oficina del Censo Electoral needs to consider this point.

1 comment:

  1. I assume they will send out letters to those on the padron or registered as residents but who didn't register at their town hall to vote. It's still unclear though whether UK citizens will actually be able to vote or not. I suspect an agreement will be reached but time is marching on.

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