15% of adults in Catalonia are not allowed to vote on February 14

There are around 6.2 million people over the age of 18 who live in Catalonia, of which only 5.3 million are called to the polls on February 14.

To illustrate this situation, Catalan News spoke to two Uruguayans who live in Barcelona: Santi Carbajal, an SEO Manager for ShBarcelona who moved to the Catalan capital 18 years ago, and Manuela Camarero, an EAE Business School student who arrived barely four months ago. 

But of these two, it is Manuela, the person who has lived there the least, who can vote in the Catalan election in two weeks’ time. Manuela happens to also be a Spanish citizen, while Santi, despite having applied for nationality back in 2014, is yet to receive a response from Spain’s justice ministry. 

“It’s really frustrating. I quite enjoy politics and would like to vote but I can’t,” Santi laments. “At the end of the day, it makes you feel like a second-class citizen.”

Citizenship and suffrage

As in many other countries, voting rights in Catalonia and the rest of Spain, are contingent upon one’s country of citizenship. This means that around 15% of Catalonia’s adult population—slightly under a million people—cannot elect the representatives that will make policies that, as residents, workers, and taxpayers, will intimately affect them. 

There are some slight exceptions to this rule, although in practice few of these people end up exercising their right to vote. Residents from other EU countries—including dual Uruguayan-Italian citizen Santi—are allowed to vote in municipal and EU elections. 

Spain also allows residents from a handful of countries it has established bilateral voting agreements with, such as Colombia or Norway, to cast their ballots in local elections too. But only Spanish citizens can vote in Spanish and Catalan elections. 

According to Karlos Castilla, a researcher at the Catalan Institute of Human Rights and an SOS Racisme board member, suffrage laws do not reflect the reality of modern-day diverse societies. In a globalized world in which it is not uncommon for people to migrate for various reasons and to establish their lives away from their country’s of origin, current voting laws are obsolete, Castilla argues.  

“What should matter most is where your life takes place, which is where political decisions will affect you,” Castilla maintains, especially as becoming a Spanish national—and therefore part of the electorate—is often a long and burdensome process.

How to become Spanish

Being born in Spain does not automatically make you a citizen, who of course, as an adult, will then be allowed to vote. 

The most common way of becoming a Spanish national is by having at least one Spanish parent, but for a while, people like Manuela were able to become citizens too because their grandparents had left the country in exile and their parents would have otherwise been born in Spain if this hadn’t been the case. 

Other people who have lived in Spain for the required period of time, which varies depending on their country of origin, and pass a Spanish language test as well as another on culture and society, can initiate the lengthy process of becoming a citizen.