RESIDENTS in Spain are due to cast their ballots again today (Sunday) in a multiple election of the type that only crops up once every 20 years: the local and regional polls being held at the same time as the European Parliamentary vote.
The latter is every five years, and this time around, a total of 37,272,179 people in or from Spain are eligible to vote: 34,803,653 Spaniards living in the country, 2,103,216 Spanish people who live abroad and opted to vote for candidates representing their nation of origin rather than of residence; and 365,310 Europeans living in Spain.
Of these, nearly half are Romanian or British – even if Brexit had gone ahead on the planned date of March 29 or the initial extension of April 12, Brits may still have been voting for their Spanish MEPs due to the tightness of the deadline, as first-time voters had to register by January.
British nationals living in Spain were already going to be allowed to vote in the local council elections, since the country's president, Pedro Sánchez, had struck a deal with the UK allowing them to do so – the first of the 27 remaining member States to protect Britons' vote.
But only Spanish nationals are allowed to vote in the regional government elections – as is also the case with the general elections, the most recent of which was held on April 28 this year.
Regional elections have already been held in the Comunidad Valenciana (on April 28) and Andalucía (December 2, 2018), and are not due yet in Galicia, Catalunya or the Basque Country, meaning voting will take place in 12 of Spain's 17 regions, with 16,480,264 eligible to cast their ballots, of whom 966,121 live abroad.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com