Get Out and Vote

Amy Holden urges EU expats to use their voting rights

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Although we live alongside flags fluttering from every balcony and see demonstrations every other weekend, few of us foreign residents in Barcelona attempt to get to grips with the bitterly contested arguments about the future of Catalonia, much less get involved in politics ourselves.

But Amy Holden, an Australian of British descent and Barcelona resident for 16 years, is not afraid to roll up her sleeves and get involved. Along with a group of like-minded foreigners and locals, she set up Europeans in Catalonia, which began as a Facebook group in September 2017 and is now an officially registered association with the Catalan Departament de Justicia. Europeans in Catalonia aims to inform citizens of EU countries about their voting rights in Spain and promote participation in the European and municipal elections, which will take place in May 2019.

When we meet at her home, overlooking Collserola Park behind Barcelona and out to the Vallès beyond, Amy tells me that she never gave politics a second thought until she sent her son to the local escola bressol (nursery school) in 2011.

“Everything was fine until l’AMPA (Associació de Mares i Pares d'Alumnes, the parents’ association) started to send out political material to the parents’ email addresses. At first it was just about the public services cuts. I was fine with that because the cuts were affecting the school. But then they started calling on parents to come to independence rallies. For me, that crossed a line. Schools should be politically neutral places,” she says.

When Amy complained about the emails, she says she was bullied by a group of parents at the school who excluded her from l’AMPA. Worried that the negative atmosphere could affect her son, she felt forced to remove him from the school.

“That’s when I woke up,” she says. “I started looking into how I could vote.”

Thirty-nine-year-old Amy seems full of energy, her blonde ponytail bobbing as she bustles around her kitchen making me coffee, dispatching medicine to her husband, who is sick in bed, and taking a business call in fluent Spanish — all with a baby on her hip.

As well as running her own business and taking care of her two small boys, Amy has found time to qualify as a psychologist specialized in perinatal psychology. As if that’s not enough, she’s also in the process of setting up a weekly radio program on Barcelona City FM.

Born in the suburbs of Adelaide, Australia, to British-immigrant parents, Amy remembers asking her father if she was Australian or British. “He told me that I was a bit of both, and explained that I was entitled to my British passport, which meant I could move freely around Europe. I think that’s what planted the seed in my head,” she says.

Like many Antipodeans before her, Amy made the pilgrimage to London in her early twenties. She started working as a consultant for a software company and — just for fun — took Spanish classes in the evenings. When her company offered her the opportunity to transfer to Madrid, she jumped at the chance. But she found the sprawling Spanish capital unmanageably large and much preferred the compact, intimate feel of Barcelona, where she often visited clients. “I was really drawn to Barcelona and felt immediately at home here. My client companies were smaller but more dynamic and innovative than the large corporate clients I worked with in Madrid,” she tells me.

Eventually, she left her job and started her own company: a brand of science-based educational toys. When she met her Catalan husband Fernando in Barcelona in 2002, the city became her permanent home.

It took Amy several visits to the local ajuntament (city council) to figure out that in order to register to vote, EU nationals need to be empadronats (enrolled as a resident in their local district) and fill out an additional form to officially declare their intention to vote. With her paperwork finally in order, Amy showed up at her local polling station on election day in September 2015 determined to cast her ballot.

“When we got there, they told me I wasn’t on the list. I said that was impossible — I had brought the form with the official stamp on it with me because I’d had a sense that it might not be easy. I think they just wanted to get rid of me, but I insisted we call the Instituto Nacional de Estadística [which houses the records] to check. It turned out that there was a separate list for foreigners, which neither I nor the people who were staffing the table were aware of,” she explains.

In Spain, ordinary citizens on the electoral roll are randomly selected to staff the tables at polling stations, similar to jury service. Amy fears that most don’t receive clear instructions about how to find foreigners on the list.

“I was eventually able to exercise my right to vote, but while it was being sorted out, four other foreigners came in and left without being able to do so,” she says.

Posting about her frustration on Facebook, Amy soon came across others who had similar concerns, and together they formed a Facebook group that has now evolved into the aforementioned Europeans in Catalonia. The association is still in its infancy, with around 45 paid members, plus another 500 in the Facebook group.

Amy describes the members as a mix of European nationalities, plus a few locals who are concerned about the political situation in Catalonia. Some are emphatically against the formation of an independent Catalan republic, not least because the European Commission has stated, “If a referendum were to be organised in line with the Spanish Constitution it would mean that the territory leaving would find itself outside of the European Union.”

“Our immediate campaign is to encourage citizens of EU countries in Catalonia to use their voting rights in the municipal and European elections,” explains Amy. “We realized that with approximately 445,000 citizens of EU countries resident in Catalonia [a figure in line with the 2017 Statistical Yearbook of Catalonia] we could really make a difference. In the longer term, we want to press the EU for a treaty change that would allow citizens of EU countries who make use of free movement to be able to vote in national elections in their host nation,” she says.

It's an ambitious goal for such a small organization; currently, enfranchisement is designated as a state competence by the EU Parliament, which means member states decide for themselves who can participate in their national elections.

The members of Europeans in Catalonia make up for their low numbers with dedication and enthusiasm, printing leaflets, creating videos for their YouTube channel and staffing a stall at Barcelona International Community Day last October. They are also collaborating with the EU Parliament’s “This Time I’m Voting” campaign to promote participation in the European parliamentary elections.

Maybe it’s because she was born in Australia, but Amy has always seen her rights as the citizen of an EU country as a valuable privilege. She tells me that her small business, which exports products to other European countries, simply wouldn’t be viable if it weren’t based within the single market. She worries that there is a danger of people in Catalonia taking their membership of the EU for granted when the pros and cons of an independent Catalan republic are debated.

“This topic needs to be part of the conversation,” Amy says firmly. “Finding ourselves outside the EU would be a disaster and we need EU citizens in Catalonia to make sure that doesn’t happen by using their voting rights.”

How EU Citizens in Barcelona Can Register to Vote:

Citizens of EU member states have the right to vote in the municipal (council and mayoral) elections and the European elections. The next elections will be held in May 2019. (Despite plans for Brexit, British residents in Spain will still be able to vote in these European elections according to the Instituto Nacional de Estadística).

Here’s what you have to do to get registered:

1. Get empadronat/empadronada (enrolled as a resident) at your local ajuntament (city council). For this you will need your passport, NIE and proof of address, which is most easily done by providing the original copy of your lease agreement with your name on it.

2. At the same time, fill out a form to register on the electoral census, remembering to tick the boxes to declare your intention to vote.

Before you go, make a cita prèvia (appointment) at your ajuntament or at the citywide Oficina d'Atenció Ciutadana in Plaça Sant Miquel, which you can do online or by calling 010.

For those who are already empadronats it’s possible to add your name to the electoral census directly at the Oficina del Censo Electoral, Via Laietana 8.

Before the election, you should receive a polling card in the mail with details of where to go to vote. On election day, remember that the people staffing the polling station might not be aware that foreigners are registered on a separate list behind the main list so please ask that they check it for your name.