The Third Chamber of the Supreme Court of Spain decided this Tuesday to provisionally suspend the registrations in the electoral roll of those who obtained Spanish nationality under the so-called "grandchildren's law", a decision that directly affects thousands of Cubans who processed their citizenship under that regulation.
The resolution arrived just 24 hours after the public hearing held on Monday before the higher court, where the petitioning organizations —Iustitia Europa and the Vox party— warned that the upcoming general elections could be tainted in an "irreversible" way if the automatic enrollments in the Censo Electoral de Residentes Ausentes (CERA) were not halted immediately.
Both the State Attorney's Office and the Public Prosecutor's Office had opposed the measure, deeming the damages claimed by the appellants as "potential" and "abstract," as reported by the Spanish media ABC.
The suspension is precautionary in nature and does not settle the substance of the dispute, which is the appeal filed against the agreement of the Central Electoral Board (JEC) dated July 16, 2026, which the plaintiffs accuse of "abdicating its supervisory function, hiding behind an alleged lack of competence."
The central argument of those advocating for the suspension is that, once the votes are cast, it would be impossible to reverse their value, which would create "irreversible harm" in the elections.
The Vox MEP Jorge Buxadé emphasized during the hearing the magnitude of the phenomenon: the forecasts of between 10,000 and 16,000 monthly registrations in the CERA fell well short of the reality, with 29,000 new registrations recorded in just 60 days.
At the center of the debate is an instruction from the Ministry of Justice that expanded the assumptions of Law 20/2022 on Democratic Memory —commonly known as the "grandchildren's law"— by establishing a "general presumption of exile" for those who left Spain between July 18, 1936, and December 31, 1955, without the need to provide documentary proof of that status.
This expansion skyrocketed the number of applications worldwide: according to data from June 2026, a total of 2.5 million requests were submitted, of which only 545,000 had been approved eight months after the deadline, which occurred on October 22, 2025.
For Cubans, the judicial decision has immediate consequences.
Cuba was one of the countries with the highest demand under this law: the Spanish General Consulate in Havana received over 107,000 applications by September 2025, and it is estimated that around 300,000 people on the island initiated procedures since the regulation came into effect in October 2022.
The political debate in Spain has intensified around whether the new voters registered in the CERA — many of whom reside in Cuba, Argentina, and other Latin American countries — could sway the electoral outcome in favor of the government of Pedro Sánchez, something that the opposition denounced as a manipulation of the census for electoral purposes.
The precautionary suspension agreed upon this Tuesday freezes new registrations while the Supreme Court deliberates on the substance of the appeal, marking an unprecedented decision in the process stemming from the Democratic Memory Law.
While the court resolves the substantive issue, those who have already obtained Spanish nationality but are not yet listed in the CERA find themselves in a state of uncertainty regarding their ability to vote in the upcoming elections.
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