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BREXIT

BREXIT: Britons told to register to vote in local elections despite deal with Spain

Britain and Spain signed an agreement back in 2020 to protect post-Brexit voting rights, but British citizens wanting to vote in Spanish municipal elections still need to register for each election. Here's how.

BREXIT: Britons told to register to vote in local elections despite deal with Spain
Britons must register to vote in municipal elections. Photo: Pau BARRENA / AFP

Spain and Britain have a mutual recognition agreement on voting in local elections. But many Britons in Spain might not realise that they also need to register in order to be able to vote. With elections coming up in 2023, here’s what you need to know.

Generally speaking, if you’re a non-EU citizen, you cannot vote in elections in Spain or in the EU. However, according to Spain’s National Statistics Institute (INE), Spain does have bilateral agreements with Norway, Iceland, Bolivia, Cape Verde, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, New Zealand, Peru, Paraguay, South Korea, Trinidad and Tobago and, as of 2022, the United Kingdom. 

British citizens

There has been some confusion and misinformation regarding the voting rights of British citizens in Spain following Brexit. According to Spanish government guidelines, Spain and the UK have an agreement on mutual recognition of the right to vote and stand in local elections.

British citizens residing in Spain are still entitled to vote and stand for municipal elections in Spain under similar conditions as they had been able to when still EU citizens.

READ MORE: Spain enshrines in law voting rights for UK residents in local elections

Following Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union, however, British citizens now do not have the right to vote in elections to the European Parliament, and still can’t vote in national elections.

Interestingly, while many might think this is somewhat of a bespoke arrangement for Brits, in reality, it isn’t, it’s similar to the bilateral agreements Spain has with the countries mentioned above. 

When The Local Spain initially reported on the agreement, there were 37 locally elected British town and city councillors in Spain, mostly in the Valencia region and Andalusia, the two Spanish regions with the highest number of British residents.

However, despite the agreement between Britain and Spain – which also protects the voting rights of Spaniards in the UK – many Britons might not realise that they have to actually register to vote, and quite possibly do it more than once.

With municipal elections next coming up in May 2023, it’s important to understand what you need to do in order to vote (or run) in your local election.

Who is eligible? 

It’s important to note that not everyone from the UK can vote in these municipal elections. You must meet a certain set of criteria to be able to do so. These are:

  • Have a legal residence permit in Spain. 
  • Have legally resided in Spain continuously for at least three years prior to your registration. 
  • Be domiciled in the municipality where you want to vote and appear in the municipal register. 

Re-registering

As a British citizen living in Spain, the reciprocal agreement between Britain and Spain is not enough. Whereas EU citizens need only register once in order to be able to vote in local elections, British citizens have to register for each election.  

The next set of upcoming elections is on May 28th, 2023 and many people might not know that they must reregister for every election they intend to vote in – not just once as they did when they were EU citizens.

Deadline

The INE states that Britons must register any time between December 1st 2022 and January 15th 2023 to be eligible to vote in the May 28th elections. 

How to register to vote in Spain

Only people included on the padrón municipal at the local town hall may vote. To be included on the register, visit your local ayuntamiento with the following documents:

  • your passport
  • proof of address (you can use utility bills or rental contract or similar)
  • a completed registration form, known as a volante de empadronamiento.

You can access the registration form via your local city or town hall website.

The process is free, and once you are registered you should visit the ayuntamiento again to declare your desire to vote. Just being on the register does not grant you voting rights, so you must actively declare in order to be included on the electoral roll. 

For the May 2023 elections, this must be completed before January 15th, 2023.

British electoral block?

There are several areas in Spain with strong concentrations of British residents. As a result, Britons can actually have a significant sway over local election results in Spain.

Though according to Spain’s national statistics body, INE, there are 282,124 Britons living legally in Spain, the Spanish government’s Migration Ministry puts that number at over 400,000 and around a quarter of them live in the province of Alicante. If we take Benidorm for example, where the 3389 Britons make up almost 5 percent of the 69,118 total inhabitants, the British vote could potentially have a significant effect on elections there.

After Britons, it is the Colombian and Ecuadorian communities that have the biggest foreign electorates in Spain, both with around 140,000 registered residents. Romania and Morocco, the citizens of which both outnumber Britons in Spain, do not have mutual voting agreements with the Spanish government and cannot vote in municipal elections.

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GIBRALTAR

UK soldiers expelled from Spain after crossing from Gibraltar posing as tourists

Spain has expelled four Royal Navy servicemen who crossed the Spain-Gibraltar border on foot three times in a single day while dressed in civilian clothing, with Spanish media claiming they were checking the porosity of the border.

UK soldiers expelled from Spain after crossing from Gibraltar posing as tourists

Spanish police expelled four British soldiers from Spain on Monday night, removing them from the country and sending them back to Gibraltar after it emerged that the four Royal Navy personnel had entered Spain illegally while “posing as tourists”, as the Spanish press has reported.

The incident comes a week after the British Navy carried out military drills in the waters surrounding Gibraltar, the British overseas territory that Spain still claims sovereignty of, and amid the seemingly never-ending negotiations between Spain and the UK to finally settle a post-Brexit deal.

READ ALSO: Gibraltar Brexit deal ‘close’ as Brits crossing into Spain use fake bookings

The expulsions, now reported in the Spanish press by Europa Sur and confirmed to El Periódico de España by official sources, occurred after the four soldiers arrived in Gibraltar on a civilian flight and entered into Spain. They also had return tickets via Gibraltar.

They then reportedly passed themselves off as tourists and entered Spain on foot, staying at a four-star hotel in La Línea de la Concepción, the town in the Cádiz province of Andalusia that borders Gibraltar.

Stranger yet is that they crossed the border at La Línea on up to three occasions in the space of a few hours.

READ ALSO: What Brits need to know before crossing the border from Gibraltar to Spain

Spanish authorities detected their presence because two of the soldiers tried to return to Gibraltar at night.

At the border, Spanish police officers enquired as to the reason for their entry, to which the soldiers replied that they were on their way to work and brandished British military documentation.

The police decided that their entry into Spain had been irregular because they did not meet the Schengen Borders Code requirements demanded of non-EU citizens entering EU territory.

According to Europa Sur, Spanish police then asked the two soldiers to call their colleagues in the hotel in order to collect their luggage and return to Gibraltar, which took place at midnight on Monday 18th March.

The Spanish press has stated that it is common for soldiers to try to stay in Spanish territory by concealing their military status and entering while posing as tourists.

The motive for the soldiers’ presence, particularly their repeated trips across the border, remains unknown.

The military drills in the area seem to suggest that the soldiers may have taken part in or be due to take part in further exercises and wanted to enter as tourists.

Spanish media also suggests that they could have been testing the porosity of the border, though these claims remain unsubstantiated.

Gibraltar’s post-Brexit status still remains unresolved. The EU and UK government are now onto their 18th round of treaty negotiations after the framework agreement between London and Madrid made on New Year’s Eve 2020 essentially ‘fudged’ the border issue, leaving Gibraltar’s status within the Schengen area undefined.

Spain’s Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares said in late-2023 that “we are very, very close” to finalising a Brexit agreement.

“I would sign a deal with Britain over Gibraltar tomorrow,” Albares told journalists at the time. Yet no agreement was made, despite the Minister’s positivity, nor the appointment of former UK Prime Minister David Cameron as Foreign Secretary.

Albares’ comments came at a time when it was reported in the Spanish press that many UK nationals have been using fake hotel bookings in order to try and bypass the Schengen rules and trick their way through border checks.

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