Latin Americans represent one of the most sizable migrant communities in Spain. Yet, unlike other minority groups, they count with longer migration tradition, linguistic and cultural similarities with the Spanish population, and easier access to Spanish nationality. Drawing on original data covering a large number of candidates (N = 5,055), this article examines whether this apparently favorable configuration guarantees the nomination of candidates from this minority group at local elections in municipalities with strong demographic presence of Latin American residents. Our findings indicate that this group is still underrepresented in Spanish politics. Few Latin American candidates are fielded by political parties, and even fewer (<2%) manage to achieve elected office. To interpret these results, we examine the extent to which Spanish parties field minority candidates. We show that while some parties are proactively including these candidates, only few nominate them in secure positions of the electoral lists and that Spanish parties’ inclusiveness does not seem to be aligned with Latin American voters’ partisan preferences.

拉丁美洲人是西班牙规模最大的移民社区之一。但是，与其他少数群体不同，他们的迁移传统更长，与西班牙人口在语言和文化上的相似之处以及获得西班牙国籍的机会更大。利用涵盖大量候选人的原始数据（N= 5,055），本文研究了这种看似有利的配置是否能保证在拉丁美洲居民人口众多的市镇的地方选举中提名该少数群体的候选人。我们的发现表明，该群体在西班牙政治中的代表人数仍然不足。几个拉丁美洲候选人由政党派出，甚至更少的（<2％）管理，以实现民选公职。为了解释这些结果，我们研究了西班牙政党派遣少数族裔候选人的程度。我们表明，尽管有些政党积极地将这些候选人包括在内，但只有少数人提名他们在选举名单上的安全位置，而且西班牙政党的包容性似乎与拉丁美洲选民的党派偏爱并不相符。