HOW TO VOTE in Spain
The European elections take part in Spain on 26 May 2019. Citizens aged 18 or over can cast a vote. It’s also possible to vote by mail or abroad if certain conditions are met. You can find all the information about the electoral process on the Ministry of Interior’s special webpage.
The elections take place in Spain on 26 May 2019, the same date as the local elections all over the country and some regional elections, specifically Aragón, Asturias, Balearic Islands, Canary Islands, Cantabria, Castile and León, Castilla-La Mancha, Community of Madrid, Extremadura, La Rioja, Navarre y la Región of Murcia, as well as the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla.
Voters in Spain have to vote in a specific polling station based on their home address and their local census. Check the location of your polling station.
The electoral census will take into account the date registered and consulted by the national authorities to local governments and consulates between 8 and 15 April. Voters have this eight-day period to claim a change of address, which they must justify, but only within the same electoral circumscription (which corresponds with a province or island).
You do not need to register in advance, as this is done automatically by the authorities. However, if you have changed your home address recently, we advise you to check with the national election authority whether your registration on the voting lists is correct.
You must be registered in the local census (padrón municipal). You can check where you are registered on the website of the National Statistics Institute.
If you are not registered, you should go to the town Hall of the city or town where you live. The electoral census will be consulted and open for changes between 8 and 15 April.
Yes, in Spain it is possible to vote by mail.
Voters who know that they will not be in the locality where they would normally vote on election day, or cannot go to their polling station, may cast their vote by mail, upon request to the provincial delegation of the Electoral Census Office.
Once the vote by correspondence has been requested, it is not possible to vote in person at the polling station.
The vote by mail should be requested in any office of the postal service between 2 April and 16 May. This must be done in person at the post office using the national identity document (bring the original as a photocopy is not allowed).
Once the request has been made, you will receive ballots and electoral envelopes, along with the certificate of the provincial delegation of the Electoral Census Office, and an envelope with the address of the polling station of where to vote by registered mail.
The acknowledgment of receipt of these documents must be signed after proof of identity.
You must then choose the ballot, insert it in the voting envelope and close the envelope. Only the chosen ballot must be entered in this envelope.
The sealed envelope or envelopes and the certificate must be placed in the envelope addressed to the polling station, which should then be sent by registered mail between 6 and 22 May. It does not need postage.
(For further information, check the Junta Electoral Central website and the electoral law (articles 72 and 73)]
Yes, you can, but you have to be registered in the local census of the city where you live and register yourself (by a statement) in the electoral census for foreign citizens. The period to register the willingness to vote is from 30 November 2018 to 30 January 2019.
If you are already registered in the municipal census, you should receive a letter from the OCE (Electoral Census Office) and you must answer with a statement of your willingness to vote either in the local or European elections. This year, the OCE will send 575,072 letters. However, the OCE only sends the letter once. If a letter for a previous election was not answered, the OCE will assume the person involved does not intend to vote in Spain.
If you do not receive the letter, there are other options:
- Online, on the National Statistics Institute .To do it online you would need your NIF (ID for foreigners) and the digital certificates.
- If you do not have it, you should go to the town hall of the city you live in.
If you are not yet registered in the municipal census, it is possible to do both procedures (registration in the census and the statement of willingness to vote) during the same visit to the town hall.
Otherwise, you should check with your embassy or consulate and ask if you could vote on the consulate premises or via postal mail. The system and procedures can be different in each EU country.
There are no threshold provisions for the European elections according to the law, unlike for the national and local elections, where there is a 3% and 5% threshold respectively. In July 2018, the European Parliament set a mandatory threshold of about 2-5% in EU countries. However, this obligation is does not affect the 2019 European elections.
Political parties or individual people who wish to stand for the elections should register with the national election authority in the periods set by the Electoral Board, yet to be published. Candidates and coalitions are published in Spain's official journal about a month before the elections.
An accessible voting kit is available for people with a severe visual impairment who have already registered in the electoral census, who know how to use braille and have a 33% or more recognised level of disability, or who are members of the National Organisation of Spanish Blind people (ONCE). Anyone who is eligible can apply for the kit and have it delivered to them in their polling station on the day of the European elections. They must have applied for this procedure between 2 and 29 April.
How can I vote in other countries?
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