The Constitutional Court rejected this Wednesday by majority the appeal of the Ombudsman against the suspension of voting in the upcoming general elections for those naturalized by the so-called grandchildren's law who do not prove to be descendants of exiles. The court of guarantees considered the challenge premature and left, for now, the decision of the Supreme Court in place.
An inadmissibility that does not resolve the merits, but does stop the challenge
The Plenary agreed not to admit the appeal for processing with 10 magistrates in favor, including its president, Cándido Conde-Pumpido, and two against, Ramón Sáez and Juan Carlos Campo, according to legal sources cited by Europa Press. The resolution does not endorse the content of the disputed measure; it merely closes for now the path presented by the Ombudsman.
The matter revolves around the suspension of voting for new naturalized citizens who do not prove their link with exiles, a measure adopted by the Supreme Court and later questioned before the Constitutional Court. For now, the court of guarantees has chosen not to enter into the examination of the merits.
The PP turns the ruling into political ammunition against Sánchez
The Popular Party interpreted the decision as a setback for the Government and assured that the Constitutional Court has not "protected the fraud" of the grandchildren's law. The group's spokesperson in Congress, Ester Muñoz, wrote on her X account that "The TC does not protect fraud. How big it must have been", a political message that does not modify the procedural scope of the resolution.
Muñoz added that whoever started this alleged "fraud" has "an investigation ahead", in allusion to the admitted complaint against Sofía Puente for alleged prevarication. She also maintained that "Sánchez is having quite a day" and predicted that the campaign would be "long" for the President of the Government.
In the same vein, the Deputy Secretary of Sectoral Coordination of the PP, Alma Ezcurra, stated that the situation reveals "How botched it must be, that not even the Constitutional Court of Conde-Pumpido has dared to endorse this electoral engineering operation." Her political reading clashes, however, with the real scope of the agreement, which for now only dismisses the appeal as premature.
The decision leaves the legal dispute open and maintains the suspension of voting in the terms set by the Supreme Court, while the procedural course of the challenge remains pending. That is, for now, the only immediate effect confirmed by the resolution.