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SPAIN SHOWS ANOTHER IMMIGRATION POLICY IS POSSIBLE  
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Pablo Castaño
January 31, 2026
Jacobin
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_ Spanish political leaders know that the economy relies on
undocumented migrants and their labor. Rather than step up expulsions,
Pedro Sánchez’s government has announced plans to regularize over
500,000 migrants’ status. _

Spain’s broad-left government has announced regularization plans
that could benefit over 500,000 migrants without legal status. While
governments around Europe harshen anti-migrant measures, the Spanish
example shows it’s not inevitable., (Ricardo Rubio / Europa Press
via Getty Images)

 

The Spanish government has announced a regularization process for
immigrants in an irregular administrative situation. It’s a move
that could benefit more than five hundred thousand people currently
living in Spain without legal status. With this measure, Pedro
Sánchez’s broad-left government is swimming against the tide of
Europe and the United States. The decision by the Spanish government,
formed by his Partido Socialista (PSOE) and the left-wing Sumar,
supposes a great success for the citizen-led campaign
“¡Regularización Ya!” (“Regularization Now!”), driven by
migrant and anti-racist groups, which has collected over seven hundred
thousand signatures from Spanish nationals in favor of regularizing
all undocumented migrants.

DECREE

The regularization, which has been approved by decree in order to get
around the government’s weak parliamentary position, will apply to
foreign nationals who meet three conditions: They must have entered
Spain before last December 31, prove a minimum stay of at least five
months, and have no criminal record.

The government and the promoters of the “Regularization Now!”
campaign estimate the decree will benefit over half a million people,
although there could be over eight hundred thousand migrants
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in an irregular situation in Spain. In previous years, the government
loosened the criteria to obtain working and residence permits, but it
has not been enough to reduce this figure. Migration has quickly grown
in recent years, particularly from Latin America, and almost 18
percent of Spanish residents today are foreign-born — the
third-highest
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figure in Europe.

The extraordinary regularization process will run from April to June,
and the government has promised that it will be simple. To prove that
they have been in Spain for five months already, applicants will have
to provide documentation such as a registration certificate from town
hall, records of medical appointments, rental contracts, transport
tickets, and so forth. They may thus gain a one-year, renewable
residential permit.

The extraordinary regularization measure is an effective admission of
the cruelty of Spanish immigration legislation. As in other European
countries, the status quo condemns thousands of workers to irregular
status for years, without access to basic rights and with the constant
fear of being detained and deported. This could be called an efficient
system, if the goal was indeed to maintain a precarious, cut-rate
workforce to fuel the lowest-wage sectors of the labor market. In
Spain, almost 30 percent of hospitality staff and 20 percent of
construction workers are migrants, many in irregular situations, and
most foreign workers with university degrees work in jobs below their
qualifications.

Previous governments carried out similar regularizations. The largest
were approved under the PSOE’s previous prime minister, José Luis
Rodríguez Zapatero (over five hundred seventy thousand people in
2005) and even the staunchly conservative José María Aznar (over
five hundred thousand people between 2000 and 2001). Both measures
enjoyed broad political consensus at a time when the far right was
negligible in Spain and rapid economic growth, fueled by the housing
bubble, demanded a constant flow of low-cost workers. The
regularization of immigrants also meant that these workers would begin
to contribute to social security. Countries like France, Italy, and
Belgium have also carried out mass regularizations in the past, but
now European governments of various political colors compete to
approve xenophobic regulations
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aimed at restricting immigration or, at least, sending the message
that immigration is a huge problem. They do so with the backing of the
EU authorities themselves, with the European Commission normalizing
rights violations like deporting
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migrants to countries with which they have no connection.

PECULIAR CONTEXT

The regularization approved by the Spanish government is not a
spontaneous decision by Prime Minister Sánchez, nor is it solely a
consequence of pressure from Podemos, whose spokespeople announced the
agreement. The path to the January 27 decree began in 2020, when the
social crisis caused by the pandemic hit people in irregular
situations particularly hard. In response, anti-racist and migrant
groups launched a campaign to bring a Popular Legislative Initiative
for regularization to Parliament, using one of Spain’s few
mechanisms for direct political participation.

In the following years, dozens of different associations joined the
campaign, which managed to collect over seven hundred thousand
signatures (with the added difficulty that only Spanish nationals
could sign, thus excluding the people who might most directly benefit
from the measure). In 2024, all parliamentary parties except the
far-right Vox voted in favor of _considering_ the proposed law. The
conservative Partido Popular, despite having positions increasingly
close to Vox’s, yielded on that occasion, due mostly to pressure
from the Catholic Church, which supports the initiative.

For a year and a half, the PSOE kept the initiative blocked in
Parliament, despite constant pressure from social movements, its
government partner Sumar, and other left-wing parties. Finally, it was
Podemos, which has only four members of the national Congress, who
wrested the ruling Socialists’ approval of the measure by decree.
Sánchez’s decision was influenced by a hellish political context
for his PSOE, besieged by corruption cases, accusations of sexist
harassment within the party, and the fatal train accident in Córdoba
on January 18. With the regularization, Sánchez aims to mobilize
progressive voters by reinforcing his anti-Trump image, at a time when
the majority of Spanish public opinion is watching in horror the
racist and authoritarian turn of Immigration and Customs Enforcement
in the United States.

Vox leader Santiago Abascal who last year defended a “remigration”
policy similar to that proposed by Germany’s Alternative für
Deutschland and stoked
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riots in Murcia, has announced a legal challenge against the
regularization. Furthermore, various far-right groups have called for
demonstrations in front of the PSOE’s national headquarters. For its
part, the Partido Popular has announced its intention to denounce the
regularization to other European leaders. Its position is
uncomfortable, as part of its electorate views Trump’s repressive
turn unfavorably, while another part is moving to the further-right
Vox, an ally which is now gaining in polls at the Partido Popular’s
expense.

ACTIONS, NOT JUST WORDS

The regularization approved by the Spanish government, which has had
significant international media impact, is a breath of fresh air for
European politics and beyond. Those who oppose the racist escalation
in their countries can take it as a practical example that dismantles
the anti-immigration propaganda spread by both far-right and centrist
governments. If Spain regularizes half a million people and the
effects are positive, how can migration be the root of all problems in
France, Britain, or the United States? In this sense, Spain offers a
welcome example.

_Pablo Castaño is a freelance journalist and political scientist. He
holds a PhD in Politics from the Autonomous University of Barcelona
and has written for __Ctxt__, __Público__, __Regards__, and the
__Independent__._

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