Madrid (EFE).- Spaniards residing abroad can vote in person in a ballot box at embassies, consulates and other authorized centers abroad from this Saturday, July 15, until Thursday, the 20th, at both times in the morning and in the afternoon typical of the country in which they are.
There are more than 2.3 million Spaniards who habitually reside abroad and who can participate in these elections without having to request this option in advance, since they are the first general elections in which the requested vote is no longer in force, which governed between 2011 and 2022.
The provincial delegations of the Electoral Census Office have sent in recent weeks to the addresses of those 2,325,310 voters registered as of March 1 in the Census of Absent Resident Spaniards (CERA) both the ballots for them to choose their votes for the Congress and the Senate as the census certificate.
They have also been able to download the ballots from the internet, since this was another novelty of the last reform of the Organic Law regulating the General Electoral Regime (Loreg), as well as the suppression of the requested vote and extending the time in which it is available voting in the ballot box, with more days and during both morning and afternoon hours.
Although voting at the ballot box will be available at consulates and embassies starting this Saturday, those registered with CERA can still vote by mail.
In this case, the last day to send the vote by correspondence to the consulates is next Tuesday, the 18th, while foreign residents can vote by ballot box until Thursday the 20th.
The census of residents abroad has increased by 196,751 people compared to almost four years ago, that of the previous elections to Congress and the Senate, according to data from the Ministry of the Interior.
Although these are the first general elections since the suppression of the requested vote, the new system was already used in the elections for twelve regional parliaments on May 28.
Residents abroad can vote in legislative elections (European, general and regional), but not in municipal ones.
In Spain there are no specific electoral constituencies for those residing abroad, as there are in France and other countries.
Therefore, they have to be assigned to one of the territorial ones, which are 52 for Congress (the 50 provinces plus the two autonomous cities) and 59 for the Senate (the 47 peninsular provinces, the two autonomous cities and the ten largest islands). .
To do this, when signing up for CERA, you fill out a form in which you have to mark the municipality of your last residence in Spain, if you had one, or the municipality with the longest roots of your own or the longest-rooted the ascendants, although other reasons for choosing it can be claimed in a box.
What if the person who lives abroad is on vacation in Spain?
Residents abroad who are temporarily in Spain can vote by mail in the same way as those who live in Spain, indicating where the documentation is sent to them, but they will only be able to do so if they made their request to vote by mail, the term of which ended this Thursday , day 13.
If they did so, they can send their ballots no later than Thursday, July 20, so that they arrive on time at the polling stations.
And if the residents in Spain are on vacation abroad?
Those who reside in Spain but are abroad during this electoral process to vote must be registered in another census, that of Temporarily Absent Resident Voters (ERTA).
The deadline to request the certificate to vote through ERTA ended on June 29 and this procedure did not imply unsubscribing from the Spanish register and, since it is valid for one year, those who registered for the regional and municipal registers have not had to repeat it.
The voter indicated his provisional postal address in that registration and there he receives the electoral documentation for voting by mail, which he sends directly to his polling station in Spain, with Tuesday the 18th as the deadline.