Junts follows in the wake of PP and Vox and questions the "demographic impact" of the clean law in Catalonia

MadridOne of the pillars of PP and Vox's arguments in recent weeks has been to point out that the Spanish government would allegedly be trying to alter the electoral roll by massively incorporating people of foreign origin. The "law of the clean", which grants Spanish nationality to relatives of exiles during Francoism, and the extraordinary regularization of immigrants, which grants residence and work permits to people who were already in the country, have been the focus of criticism from the Spanish right and far-right. Not only because of the impact they predict it could have on the results of the upcoming Spanish elections —regularization does not grant the right to vote, while the "law of the clean" does give this possibility— but also on the social structure and access to public services. Now Junts has partially joined these theses.

The Junts members have registered several parliamentary initiatives in Congress focused on obtaining more information about both procedures. Carles Puigdemont's party justifies this by the "opacity of the Spanish government" and demands "the data to know the impact of demographic change in Catalonia". In this regard, Junts has asked the Spanish government to provide them with, among other things, the number of applications and nationality files resolved under the "law of the clean" as well as those related to regularization, broken down by constituencies in Catalonia. In relation to this data, the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has accused Pedro Sánchez of engaging in "electoral and social engineering".

These statements by Feijóo have been criticized by the left, which accuses him of following in Vox's footsteps to prevent a shift in votes towards the far-right. Junts' move in the lower house to join this debate, which has been fueled mainly by Vox, comes days after the barometer of the Centre d’Estudis d’Opinió (CEO) predicted that Aliança Catalana would clearly surpass Junts in Catalan elections. Faced with the rise of the Catalan far-right, Junts members also recalled this Wednesday that they have fought for Catalonia to have immigration powers, a proposal that PP and Vox rejected in Congress hand in hand with Podemos.

The CERA vote

Although Junts' main warning is based on the fact that they consider that "demographic decisions cannot be made without rigorous planning", in the series of questions registered they focus on the voting procedure through the Electoral Census of Absent Residents (CERA), although the Junts members do not explicitly speak of a risk of electoral fraud. PP and Vox have repeatedly warned that the incorporation into the CERA of new Spanish citizens through the "ley de nets" (law of the clean slate) could alter the results of the 2027 elections, although this is a very unlikely hypothesis. In the case of Junts' questions, they request information on how new citizens are incorporated into the census, with what supervision and with what criteria they are assigned to a specific municipality.

"Under what circumstances can the administration not accept the municipality proposed by the interested party and determine a different one?", Junts asks the Spanish executive. According to the PP and Vox, there is a risk that the Spanish government will register people in key constituencies to snatch seats that could be decisive. In response to questions from ARA, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs recently replied that it is the interested party who chooses the municipality based on their roots in the territory. In the case of the "ley de nets", the most common is that it is based on the place of origin of their ascendants, diplomatic sources specified.

Hot returns

Within the framework of a progressive hardening of proposals regarding immigration by the PP, Feijóo's party has announced that they will promote a legislative reform to cover the "hot returns" of immigrants who arrive swimming in Ceuta and Melilla. This was defended by the deputy secretary of sectoral coordination of the PP, Alma Ezcurra, after meeting with various police associations in Palma de Mallorca. The approach is a modification of the foreign nationals law with the aim that security forces can expel, "with full legality", without having to provide guarantees to immigrants beforehand, those individuals who attempt to arrive illegally by sea to these border territories with Morocco.