As European borders are drawn tighter across the continent, Spain hopes to regularize the status of half a million migrants under plans announced by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on January 27, 2026.
The measures will benefit migrants with no criminal record and who have spent at least five months in Spain, having been in the country since before December 31, 2025. The petitions for regularization are expected to be processed between April and June 2026.
The proposal was initially put before Congress in April 2024, but failed to garner enough support, as Sánchez’s Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) lacks a majority. This time, the plans have been approved by royal decree due to the existing “broad political, economic and social consensus” surrounding the matter, according to the government.
The announcement has received sharp criticism from Spanish conservative and far right parties. Santiago Abascal, leader of Vox, a party which has long platformed itself as an anti-immigrant force, has denounced the supposed “replacement” of the Spanish people.
Abascal criticised members of the Catholic Church who support the move – an institution his party has traditionally defended – after Luis Argüello García, president of the Spanish Bishop’s Conference, expressed his support for regularization that “recognises the dignity” of migrants.
As countries across Europe draw up stricter migration controls and leaders increase their use of anti-migrant rhetoric, Sánchez’s decision marks him as an outlier across the continent.
Tomas Tobé, a Swedish politician and member of the European People’s Party, branded the move as a “direct challenge to the Schengen area,” claiming Sánchez “lives in an alternate reality” in the European Parliament.
Although seemingly unusual in the current political climate, this is not the first time the Spanish government has proposed mass regularization. The most recent saw nearly 600,000 migrants claim legal status in 2005 under left-wing José Luis Zapatero’s leadership, while the conservative José María Aznar regularized the status of over 500,000 people between 2000 and 2001.
While some claim that such measures increase irregular immigration, studies following the 2005 regularisation show that no such change occurred. Instead, some of the most significant consequences included an increase in tax revenue and improved working conditions for immigrants.
Whatever the consequences for Spain’s political climate, regularization will have huge impacts for the country’s migrant community.
Migrant rights charity València Acull (Valencia Welcomes) recognizes the measure as “a step towards dignifying more than 500,000 people [which] translates into the recognition of the rights of people who are invisible in society,” while in conversation with EU Reports.
The testimonies of migrants who benefit from the charity’s support attest to this:
“This regularization is important to me because it allows me to have my documentation up to date, to have social security in jobs, to sign contracts,” Oscar, a migrant from Colombia, told EU Reports.
“[It will allow me] to have more opportunities and contribute my knowledge, my life experience […] and work in this country that has welcomed me so far.”
Another migrant from Equatorial Guinea, Maria, underlined the importance of such regulation: “It gives us an opportunity to live with dignity, and since we came here as migrants in search of new horizons, new lives, without so much humiliation, to have an opportunity to work […] to have a better quality of life.”
Featured image: Special Address by Pedro Sánchez, Prime Minister of Spain
Source: World Economic Forum via Flickr
Author: Faruk Pinjo
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