Check you are on the Padrón and that you have renewed within the last 5 years as no-deal Brexit looks increasingly likely

Padrón and voting rights for UK nationals will change significantly with Brexit

This week developments in the UK could indicate that the country is heading for a no-deal Brexit, in which case all of us living and working in Spain will find our status changing overnight as we lose the "rights" which are automatically ours through our EU membership.

Although there is every confidence that some sort of reciprocal arrangement will be negotiated to resolve the status issue of not only the large number of UK residents who own property or live in Spain for all or part of the year, as well as those of the Spanish nationals living or working in the UK, it would be sensible to take very basic measures just to make sure that those of us living here are properly registered with the Spanish authorities as doing so.

The most basic element of which is ensuring that we are registered on the municipal Padrón in our relevant municipality and have RENEWED our padrón within the last 5 years.

There are 45 different municipal, or local, councils within the Murcia region, each with its own town hall and each with its own Padrón registration for its residents and thousands of local councils across Spain.

In most cases, these are within the town halls, or in offices located nearby, and in the larger municipalities such as Murcia and Cartagena (OMITAS) there are outlying offices in which a check can be made to ensure that you are properly registered on the Padrón.

All municipalities have been cleaning their Padrón registers as it is common for expats to return to the UK and fail to notify the authorities that they are no longer resident in the municipality. Although computerisation is changing administrative systems, there is still little interaction between the various databases, so a council will not automatically know when a person has moved and databases do not routinely cross-reference.

This has resulted in drastic reductions in some municipal Padróns, and information released by Cartagena council earlier this month highlighted how inaccurate the Padrón databases actually are.

Data produced by the municipal “padrón” office in Cartagena showed that the number of UK nationals registered as resident in the municipality has fallen sharply over the last five years from well over 3,743 to just 1,976, a drop which councillor Alejandra Gutiérrez attributed to uncertainty over Brexit in the press release.

However, far more likely, according to sources in the padrón office itself, is that the drastic decline in the total is the result of the “cleaning up” of the register which has been taking place gradually ever since 2012 in response to legislation which requires EU nationals to renew their registration every 5 years, and which is applicable not only to Cartagena but to all of the 8,000-plus municipalities in Spain.

The official procedure is that when a renewal becomes due a letter is sent to the registered address of the individual concerned, followed by another letter, this second one registered, if the first brings about no response. Should there still be no reaction then the foreign national is removed from the padrón (after notification is published in the Official State Bulletin, but let's face it, how many of us read that???), a process which has doubtless removed many “false” residents from the list after they registered only in order to purchase a property, or even a car, or for any of dozens of other possible reasons.

In Cartagena, both letters can be acted upon not only at the main padrón office in the city but also at the OMITA local government offices located throughout the municipality. In Murcia, the main padrón office has been relocated to Calle Puerta Nueva, 10a, while the Padrón documentation can also be presented at the Oficinas de Información in outlying districts.

The system does not rely entirely on the postal warnings reaching foreign residents, though. Many expats unwittingly have their “padrón” registration automatically renewed when completing other administrative procedures, but it is strongly recommended that non-Spaniards resident in this country should check their situation on the Padrón in order to avoid possible complications and ensure that they are properly registered, particularly given the increasing prospect that a no-deal Brexit may affect all of us living in the EU outside of the UK.

It is eminently possible that some foreign nationals will have been unwittingly removed from the Padrón for a variety of other reasons, including not having received the letters mentioned above.

In addition, it is worth adding that as things stand at present if and when Brexit goes ahead the renewals period for UK nationals will fall to only two years – in other words, a large number of Britons will suddenly be required to confirm their continued residence, and if they fail to do so the number of British people officially living in Cartagena (and other municipalities, of course) will suddenly fall still further.

Voting in local elections

At present EU nationals resident in Spain are allowed to vote in the European elections and in the local elections of the municipality in which they are registered on the Padrón, although the situation by which they are encouraged to do so is by no means 100 per cent reliable and for those who are keen to exercise their democratic rights the best advice is to actively request that the relevant paperwork be completed months before voting takes place.

In theory letters are sent out well in advance of local elections to all EU nationals entitled to vote, advising them that they are required to confirm their intention to do so. The Padrón used in order to identify the potential voters is the final version of the list in the previous calendar year – for example, for the electoral list for the May 2019 election was the Padrón as it stood on 31^st December 2018.

But the reality is that for one reason or another not all of these advisory letters reach their destination. For this reason the best advice is to enquire at your local Town Hall or Padrón office around 6 months before the day on which the next local election is to be held in order to ensure that all is in order and that your voting papers reach you correctly.

(It should be pointed out, in passing, that according to sources at the Padrón office in Cartagena the system is also far from perfect for Spanish nationals, many of whom are unaware of which polling station they should go to on the day of the election! It should also be highlighted that many UK nationals living in Cartagena did not receive letters about their voting rights due to the appalling service by the Correos post office, particularly in the campo de Cartagena in the so-called "Tallante triangle" which is notorious for disappearing post; the Ed. for example, did not receive a letter requesting that she reaffirm her intention to vote and therefore missed out on the chance to vote in the last elections even though a check showed her as being registered on the Padrón.)

Again, if and when Brexit goes ahead the situation changes. Quite simply, as things stand at present British nationals living in Spain will lose their right to vote in local elections, unless a temporary agreement which was made between the governments in Madrid and London for the May 2019 elections is made permanent. The 2019 agreement was made when Brexit was scheduled to take place in late March, before the election, and by the terms of the deal the UK joined a list of countries whose nationals can vote in Spain which previously consisted of only Bolivia, Cape Verde, Chile, Colombia, South Korea, Ecuador, Iceland, Norway, New Zealand, Paraguay, Peru and Trinidad y Tobago.

In the event, of course, Brexit was postponed, but as with so many aspects of the UK’s departure from the EU the long-term consequences regarding voting rights in Spain are still far from clear at the time of this article being published.

Image: the Padrón office of Cartagena on Ronda Ciudad de La Unión

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