Universal suffrage?

There are plenty of frus­trat­ing things about being a for­eign res­i­dent, but the one that still smarts after so many years is not being able to vote. I’ve now lived in Cat­alo­nia longer than I did in my home coun­try. That al­ways makes me feel a lit­tle weird when I think of it, but doesn’t re­ally mat­ter as long as I can live like any other cit­i­zen, with the same rights as every­one else. In just about every sphere of life that is the case, ex­cept I – along with thou­sands of oth­ers – are only al­lowed to vote in local and Eu­ro­pean elec­tions.

That’s okay as far as it goes, but it only seems right that as I’m a fully paid-up mem­ber of this so­ci­ety that I should also get a say in Span­ish gen­eral elec­tions and Cata­lan re­gional elec­tions. After all, there doesn’t seem to be a prob­lem with let­ting me pay my taxes here like any other cit­i­zen. That’s a right, or rather oblig­a­tion, that is ex­tended to me and my kind. I have been in full-time em­ploy­ment since I ar­rived here, until re­cently – now that I’m get­ting older – I’ve barely trou­bled the health ser­vice for any­thing, I’ve never re­ceived any pub­lic money in the form of grants or ben­e­fits, my chil­dren are Cata­lan, I work for Cata­lan com­pa­nies, I eat bo­ti­farra, all my pa­per­work is in order, my car is Japan­ese but I did buy it from a local busi­ness, and so on, but still no vote. I’d say that I’ve done enough to de­serve one. I can’t even vote in the UK, as it’s been over 15 years since I was res­i­dent there. Apart from the fact I wouldn’t feel com­fort­able hav­ing a say there, as I con­tribute noth­ing to British so­ci­ety these days.

By the way, be­fore I con­tinue my rant, if you want to know more about the three up­com­ing elec­tions, which start with a gen­eral elec­tion on April 28, you can read all about them on pages 16 to 19, where we have an overview of the polls.

“No tax­a­tion with­out rep­re­sen­ta­tion” was the slo­gan of dis­grun­tled Amer­i­cans in the 18th cen­tury, as they began to grow in­creas­ingly un­happy with British rule. I’m not con­sid­er­ing with­hold­ing my taxes until I get a vote, as I’ll only end up in jail, but I do have a lot of sym­pa­thy with the spirit of that phrase. That the right to vote should be based on where you were born makes no sense at all. Should I pay my taxes to the UK, see­ing as I was born there?

Which brings us to the next step: how to change the sta­tus quo. Well, to change things in a de­mo­c­ra­tic so­ci­ety – in the­ory, any­way – peo­ple vote. If enough of them vote for change, the pow­ers that be have no choice but to im­ple­ment their wishes or fall into tyranny. We have seen in re­cent years how that does not al­ways work very well. Ex­hibit A are the Cata­lan lead­ers on trial for par­tic­i­pat­ing in a de­mo­c­ra­tic process and then en­abling peo­ple to vote, for which they could spend years in prison. Ex­hibit B is Brexit, with calls to re­peat the ref­er­en­dum on the grounds that some peo­ple did not like the out­come. Ex­hibit C is the para­dox that if I want to help things to change so that I get full vot­ing rights like my fel­low cit­i­zens, then I should use my vote . Ex­cept I don’t have a vote, so I’m not sure how that’s sup­posed to work. Ba­si­cally, I’m not hold­ing my breath.