Social media has been awash with ‘election engineering’ claims after Spain this week revealed plans to legalise 500,000 undocumented migrants.
In the first such measure in almost 20 years, the Spanish government is processing a Royal Decree, agreed with Podemos, that will allow the extraordinary regularisation of half a million people.
However, claims circulating on social media suggesting they will be able to vote in upcoming elections are false.
The agreement does not grant Spanish nationality, which is an essential legal requirement to vote in Spain’s general or regional elections.
Posts shared thousands of times on X have alleged electoral fraud, claiming the regularisation is intended to influence future votes.
One widely shared message claimed the government was ‘legalising everyone it has brought in so they can vote in 2027’. Spain’s electoral law makes this impossible.
Regularisation is not the same as nationality
The proposed regularisation allows migrants to obtain legal residence and work permits over time, but does not confer Spanish citizenship.
Without Spanish nationality, foreign residents cannot vote in general or regional elections, regardless of their immigration status.
This is clearly established under Article 13 of the Spanish Constitution and Article 2 of the Organic Law of the General Electoral Regime (LOREG), which restrict voting rights in national elections exclusively to Spanish citizens aged 18 or over.
Who can vote in Spain?
- General and regional elections: Only Spanish nationals may vote. Foreign residents are excluded, even if they have legal residency.
- Municipal elections: Some foreign residents may vote, but only under strict conditions.
In local elections, voting is permitted for:
- EU citizens resident in Spain
- Nationals of non-EU countries that have a reciprocal voting agreement with Spain
At the last municipal elections in 2023, eligible non-EU voters came from 13 countries, including the United Kingdom, Norway, Ecuador, Colombia, Chile and Peru.
In all cases, voters must register on the electoral roll and prove continuous legal residence, usually for five years (or three years for UK and Norwegian citizens).
EU citizens may also vote and stand as candidates in European elections in the country where they live.
How long does it take to acquire Spanish nationality?
To obtain Spanish nationality, foreign residents must usually live legally in Spain for ten years. There are exceptions:
- Five years for recognised refugees
- Two years for citizens of Ibero-American countries, Andorra, the Philippines, Guinea Equatorial, Portugal and people of Sephardic origin
- One year in specific cases, such as being born in Spain or being married to a Spanish citizen
These rules have remained largely unchanged since 2002. According to the Ministerio de Justicia, 221,284 nationality applications were approved in 2025, with more than one million granted since 2020.
Wider changes to immigration rules
Separately from this one-off regularisation, a new Immigration Regulation came into force in 2025, streamlining family reunification and restructuring residence pathways under the ‘arraigo’ system.
The government estimates that these reforms could allow around 300,000 people per year to regularise their status between 2025 and 2027 – again, without automatically granting citizenship or voting rights.
