Spain: Seventh Regularization Of Undocumented Migrants In 40 Years Exposes Need For Greater Migratory Policy Planning – Analysis
By William Chislett
More than 500,000 undocumented migrants and asylum seekers in Spain will begin to request legal status next month, under a decree law that is at odds with the anti-migration policies and xenophobic rhetoric across much of Europe.
Applicants will have to prove that they do not have a criminal record and have lived in Spain for at least five months –or have sought international protection– before 31 December 2025. The permit will be valid for a year –or five in the case of children– and renewable. After 10 years these migrants will be eligible to become Spanish citizens. They will not be eligible to move to other EU countries and work there legally until they have permanent residency in Spain.
While the government puts the number of undocumented immigrants at 500,000, the National Centre for Immigration and Borders (CNIF), part of the National Police, estimates that between 750,000 and one million illegal migrants currently living in Spain may apply for legal status.
The regularisation process is the seventh in the past 40 years (see Figure 1). Ending on 30 June, it began as a citizen-led initiative presented to parliament in 2024, signed by more than 700,000 people, endorsed by around 900 non-governmental organisations, including the Roman Catholic Church, and supported by business associations and trade unions.
Figure 1. Regularisations of undocumented migrants,1986-2026
| Year | Prime Minister | Residency permits granted |
|---|---|---|
| 1986 | Felipe González | 38,294 |
| 1991-92 | Felipe González | 114,423 |
| 1996 | Felipe González | 21,294 |
| 2000 | José María Aznar | 264,153 |
| 2001 | José María Aznar | 239,174 |
| 2005 | José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero | 576,506 |
| 2026 | Pedro Sánchez | 500,000 (estimated) |
| Total | 1,753,844 |
Although two of the previous regularisations were granted by Popular Party (PP) governments, the PP and the hard-right VOX oppose the move. The fact that the law ordering the regularisation was issued by decree (a process that is supposed only to be used in exceptional, emergency circumstances) suggests the Socialist-led minority coalition government, which relies on Basque and Catalan parties for parliamentary support, did not believe it could win a majority for it in the legislature.
In the first electoral test since announcing the regularisation, the Socialists lost a fifth of their seats in the Aragón parliament in last month’s regional election, falling from 23 to 18 (24.3% of the votes), while the anti-immigration VOX doubled its seats from seven to 14 (17.9%). The Popular Party (PP), which governs the region, won 26 seats, two less, on 34.3% of the vote, well short of a majority in the 67-seat chamber. Aragón is known as ‘Spain’s Ohio’ because, like the US state, it tends to serve as a barometer of the national electoral mood.
VOX has been campaigning throughout Spain against the regularisation under the slogan: ‘Not a single one more’. Surveys by the state pollster CIS show immigration is one of the main concerns after the housing shortage (20.3% of respondents in the February survey compared with 42.8% for housing).
Foreign workers have become a critical lever for Spain’s economic growth in recent years, enabling expansion to outpace that of most EU counterparts. As a result of a rapidly ageing population and a fertility rate well below replacement, Spain needs migrants to keep the economy growing, fill job vacancies and keep the finances of the public health and pension systems afloat.
The surge in Spain’s population over the past 50 years to almost 50 million (from 36.1 million in 1976) is almost entirely due to net international migration, particularly in the last decade. The foreign-born population surpassed 10 million in 2025 for the first time, just over 20% of the total population.
The non-EU community almost doubled between 2017 and 2025 to 4.8 million (see Figure 2); there are more Latin Americans in Spain than in the rest of the EU combined. Only two countries (Ecuador and Bolivia) in South and Central America need visas to come to Spain; most come as supposed tourists and stay.
Figure 2. Non-EU population in Spain, 2017, 2022 and 2025
| 2017 | 2022 | 2025 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Americas | 976,236 | 1,600,652 | 2,522,072 |
| Africa | 975,670 | 1,194,561 | 1,367,584 |
| Asia & Oceania | 375,674 | 482,477 | 568,342 |
| Europe | 217,053 | 264,291 | 397,960 |
| Total | 2,544,633 | 3,541,981 | 4,855,958 |
The Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, also regards a welcoming stance on migrants as a moral duty. More than two million Spaniards emigrated between 1960 and 1973. ‘It is our duty to become the welcoming and tolerant society that our own relatives would have hoped to find on the other side of our borders’, he wrote in the New York Times.[1]
More than 3 million foreigners were affiliated to the social security system at the end of 2025 (14.1% of the total). That number should substantially increase after the regularisation as it will enable more migrants to be legally employed and hence contribute to social security and pay taxes, and generally enjoy the same rights as everyone else.
Critics of the regularisation, such as Christopher Cauldwell, the conservative US journalist, in response to Sánchez’s article, say the measure risks stoking a populist reaction of the sort that has risen in France and Germany.[2] The hard-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD), founded in 2013, two years before Germany took in around one million Syrians, doubled its number of seats in the Bundestag in the 2025 election to 152 out of 630, while VOX has 33 of the 350 seats in Spain’s parliament.
The regularisation comes at a time when Spain’s unemployment rate is just under 10%, for the first time since the country’s 2008 real-estate crash and the global financial crisis. The rate, however, is still well above the average EU rate of around 6%. Given that immigration has been made necessary by a labour shortage, Cauldwell said the still high rate suggests there is a labour surplus.
Opinion polls show VOX gaining ground and the PP could need its support if, as seems likely, it is the most voted party in the next general election (due by August 2027) but does not have sufficient seats in parliament to form the next government.
Spain has been very successful so far in integrating a very large number of immigrants that have arrived over a relatively short period. More than half of them come from Latin America and bring with them the Spanish language (apart from Brazil) and, generally, the Roman Catholic religion.
There is, however, a growing problem of disparity between the educational attainment and living conditions of native Spaniards and immigrants, including those who have become nationalised Spaniards. While, for example, the early-school leaving rate of Spaniards aged 18 to 24 dropped from 16.4% in 2016 to 9.8% in 2025, that of foreigners is still over 30% (see Figure 3). This is enlarging an underclass.
Figure 3. Early school leavers, Spaniards and foreigners
| 2016 | 2018 | 2020 | 2022 | 2025 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spaniards (1) | 16.4 | 15.3 | 13.6 | 11.3 | 9.8 |
| Foreigners | 37.6 | 35.1 | 32.5 | 31.0 | 30.7 |
Low educational attainment generally limits employment prospects; in 2024 a quarter of foreigners had menial jobs, such as cleaning, performing basic maintenance in residences, hotels and offices, as well as simple tasks in sectors like food preparation, agriculture, mining, construction and garbage, while only 10% of Spaniards had such jobs, according to the Consejo Económico y Social.
Close to 20% of the total foreign-born population lived in overcrowded conditions in 2024, almost four times higher than Spaniards (see Figure 4) and 29% of that population were behind in payments for their accommodation compared with 9.2% of Spaniards.
Figure 4. Percentage of people living in overcrowded conditions by country of birth
| 2016 | 2018 | 2020 | 2022 | 2024 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spain | 3.5 | 2.9 | 4.0 | 4.5 | 5.5 |
| Abroad | 13.3 | 14.1 | 20.1 | 14.0 | 19.1 |
The monetary poverty risk rate of non-EU foreigners was 47.8% in 2024, four times higher than the rate for Spaniards. The widening gap between Spaniards and immigrants is a potentially explosive problem and needs to be narrowed so that society is more cohesive.
The surge in Spain’s population –by far the fastest growing among the EU’s five largest countries (+39.4% since 1976)– is also accentuating the gulf between rural and urban Spain. Up to 90% of the population live in 3% of the territory, one of the highest population concentrations in Europe. Efforts to attract migrants to what is known as ‘emptied-out Spain’ have borne little fruit.
The regularisation will take a significant number of immigrants out of limbo. Yet the fact that more than 1.7 million have benefited from these processes, including the latest one, over the past 40 years –and it might not be the last– exposes the need for much greater migratory policy planning.
- About the author: William Chislett (Oxford, 1951) is Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Elcano Royal Institute. He covered Spain’s transition to democracy for The Times of London between 1975 and 1978. He was then based in Mexico City for the Financial Times between 1978 and 1984. He returned to Madrid on a permanent basis in 1986 and since then, among other things, has written more than 20 books on various countries.
- Source: This article was published by Elcano Royal Institute
[1] Available at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/04/opinion/spain-migrants-europe.html.
[2] Available at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/opinion/spain-amnesty-immigration.html.