Polling station direction sign is seen ahead of general elections

A polling station direction sign is attached to a street sign near to Westminster Abbey, ahead of general elections, in London. | Maja Smiejkowska

Vicki McLeodPalma05/07/2024 11:04
TW
0

I didn’t bother to register to vote in the UK elections. Why? Because, since I’ve lived in Mallorca for two decades, I don’t feel that what’s going on in the UK is my business. What is my business is where my taxes are spent. And that is Spain. But, as a UK citizen I don’t have the right to vote in the national or European elections. So the only option I have is my local council elections, and I certainly execute my suffrage there.

But I recently found to my surprise that citizens of Spain have the right to vote in the UK general elections, so why not the other way around? The UK rules are you have to be 16 or over, a British citizen, a Commonwealth citizen, a citizen of Denmark, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal or SPAIN, or even a citizen of another EU country if you have had permission to stay in the UK since 31st December 2020! Why did the British government do this without reciprocal agreements from the other countries? There certainly is not the same agreement in Spain, and it personally drives me crazy.

Like the Americans demanded, back in the 1760’s, “No taxation without representation”, or at least that’s how it should be: I’m paying my taxes, so I should have the right to elect a representative in parliament. I wonder how many other tax paying non-Spanish citizens would like the vote, and more so, I wonder HOW they would vote.

Because the British already gave away the vote to EU citizens living in Britain without holding out for the rights of their own people abroad we may never have that chance. The attraction of a Spanish passport grows stronger every day, or maybe that was the plan all along?