Feijóo rules out a "rigged election" in the elections but continues to denounce Sánchez's "electoral engineering"

BarcelonaPedro Sánchez is not exactly preparing a "rigged election", but rather designing through "electoral engineering" a plan to win the next state elections thanks to the vote from abroad. This is the thesis defended by the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who this Tuesday wanted to place the Popular Party once again one step below Vox in the accusations of future electoral fraud that both parties have been fueling for some time. Feijóo, who was interviewed by the media La7 Región de Murcia, thus clarified his words on Monday on esRadio, where he openly criticized that the so-called "law of the clean" – a provision included in the democratic memory law – is designed to alter the electoral roll in favor of the PSOE.

Feijóo insisted that Sánchez "intends to modify the census by granting nationality to about 2.5 million people in a year and a half" without having political and institutional consensus to move forward. According to Feijóo, in addition to ensuring that all applicants meet the requirements – it opens the door to obtaining nationality for descendants of Spanish exiles without the need to reside in Spain – the "impact it will have on the electoral roll" should also be assessed. Feijóo said that according to his data – he did not explain where he obtained it from – more than 650,000 nationality applications have been registered in Buenos Aires.

Other members of the Popular Party leadership have also deployed this line of argument and have raised doubts about the procedure for granting Spanish nationality through the "law of the clean". Deputy Secretary Juan Bravo has denounced that it is a "modification of the electoral roll as has not been known in the history of Spain" and has assured that it is being done in a "dubious" way. In an interview on Antena 3, Bravo pointed to alleged "anomalies" that "can affect specific provinces, manipulated in a specific way." Again, without any concrete data to support the suspicions.

For a long time, the PP has subscribed to the theory that the vote from abroad can alter the next Spanish elections, with the Madrid president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, leading this battle. But it is Vox who most uninhibitedly speaks of the "tupinada" that, they say, the PSOE is preparing. Just as Trump did in the elections he lost against Joe Biden in 2020, the Spanish far-right considers that Pedro Sánchez is preparing a "slow-motion coup d'état" through the "clean-up law". The spokesperson for Vox in Congress, José María Figaredo, has gone so far as to estimate that the PSOE could win 10 to 15 seats thanks to the increase in the electoral roll abroad. Calculations that he has not based on any study of the situation. In the last state elections, the vote from abroad changed one seat: the one the PP won from the PSOE in Madrid.

The paradigm of Cuba

The popular spokesperson in the Senate, Alicia García, has directed some suspicions to the supposed "outsourcing" of the granting of nationality "through Cuban companies linked to the regime". "Doesn't that make you suspicious?", she asked, without providing proof of the alleged irregularities. She also remarked that her party is "concerned" and that for this reason "it must be analyzed with rigor".

Figaredo has joined in, who with the argument of alleged irregularities in Cuba has announced that Vox has sent a letter to the Central Electoral Board (JEC) requesting the suspension of postal voting for electors abroad. This would oblige them to exercise their right to vote in person at embassies or consulates. A situation that, in fact, is already the most common in Cuba, where postal votes are practically not counted for general elections, as explained in a recent report by the digital media in a recent report by the digital media The Objective.