Can elections be manipulated in Spain?

BarcelonaThe short answer to the headline of this news is no. The long one admits nuances, such as, for example, how much money and infrastructure does the politician or party that wants to manipulate the elections have? To alter the results, there is only one remotely viable option and it is not the one that both Vox and Isabel Díaz Ayuso have been hinting at for days. The way would be to buy enough elected deputies to turn around the electoral results. But, of course, the fraud would be extremely difficult to hide. Can you imagine ten deputies from the PSOE or the PP voting against their candidate?

We will never know – but we will always suspect – what happened in the Madrid Assembly in 2003, when two socialist deputies abstained in the decisive vote to make the PSOE candidate, Rafael Simancas, president. "I didn't get paid anything," Eduardo Tamayo, the main protagonist of the tamayazo, has been repeating since then, which led to the repetition of the elections and Esperanza Aguirre becoming president of the community. If the PP had wanted to manipulate those elections – the popular party has always denied it –, the best moment would have been precisely then: they needed exactly two socialist deputies to renounce their party.

But this is not what the PP and Vox are talking about today, who point out that Pedro Sánchez would be preparing to "buy" the next general elections. How? They say by altering the electoral rolls with the massive incorporation of immigrants or by controlling postal voting. Is that possible? "The elections are absolutely secure," explains to ARA the former head of Electoral Processes of the Generalitat, Ismael Peña-López. How can he be so sure? Firstly, because "Correos is impregnable". "Changing one vote could be easy, but many more would have to be changed, and to do so with 1,000 or 30,000, there would have to be so many people involved that it would be noticed," he explains. Postal voting, moreover, is usually a small part of the total.

Regarding the regularization of migrants, the extraordinary process opened in the State does not grant nationality and, therefore, neither does the right to vote. And in the case of the naturalization of up to 2.5 million relatives of Franco's exiles (basically in South America) thanks to the democratic memory law, it is a way to obtain a European passport. The electoral participation of expatriates –especially those not born in Spain– is minimal and the possibility that they will do what Vox suggests –that hundreds of thousands who do not even know each other strategically choose the constituencies in which to register to alter the results– is little more than science fiction.

Thousands of those involved

details of the Pope's visit to the State have begun to be releasedAnd Indra, the company that centralizes the information from the polling stations, receives it in an encrypted database that cannot be edited. Small-scale error or manipulation would be possible. Doing so with enough force to change the results is entirely impossible. "Those who insinuate election manipulation are part of anti-democratic movements interested in sowing things that they believe they can later reap," opines Peña-López. Doubting the credibility of institutions is the first step.

The details of the week

This week details have begun to be released about the Pope's visit to the State. At the headquarters of the Episcopal Conference, in Madrid, a Rac1 journalist asked the archbishop of Barcelona, Joan Josep Omella, about Camp Nou, generating a murmur and some curses among the other journalists. It wasn't because it was Barça's stadium, but because the question had been asked in Catalan. "I believe that almost all of you understand Catalan when an Aragonese like me speaks it," Omella replied, eliciting some laughter in the room.

Borja Sémper, the "moderate" of the PP, has reappeared this week after overcoming cancer. At the event, there were some retired politicians, such as Ciudadanos' Albert Rivera and Begoña Villacís. The former candidate for Madrid was seen very effusive greeting journalists, entering hand in hand with Cuca Gamarra and, in the end, sending an audio explaining that she was very happy to have returned to politics for a day.