Wednesday 28 / January / 2026
Madrid: Spain's left-wing government on Tuesday said it had approved a fast-track plan to allow up to 500,000 undocumented migrants to apply for legal residency status, most of them from Latin America and Africa.
The move is one of the largest regularisations seen in Europe in years, and bucks the wider trend of many European governments adopting tougher stances on migration.
How will the regularisation take place?
Migration Minister Elma Saiz said the measure would apply to people who had been in Spain for at least five months as of December 31, 2025, provided they could also prove they had no criminal record. Applications are set to open in April and run until June 30, allowing beneficiaries to work in any sector and anywhere in the country.
They would apply for a one-year renewable residency permit, or five years for children.
"Today is a historic day," Saiz told journalists during a press conference.
Saiz said the government was reinforcing a migration model based on human rights, integration, and compatibility with economic growth and social cohesion.
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has repeatedly argued that migration underpins Spain's economic performance, saying it accounted for about 80% of growth over the past six years and roughly 10% of social security revenues.
The unemployment rate fell below 10% in late 2025, with foreigners making up a majority of new hires in the last quarter of the year.
The plan was adopted by royal decree, allowing the government to bypass parliament, where it lacks a stable majority.
However, it was lent support from the far-left Podemos party, whose leaders framed the move as a moral response to anti-migrant rhetoric after a deal to prop up Sanchez's wobbly parliamentary numbers.
What did the opposition say?
Alberto Nunez Feijoo, the leader of the center-right opposition Popular Party said the plan was aimed at "diverting attention" from the rail disaster that killed 45 people in the south of the country on January 18.
"In socialist Spain, illegality is rewarded. Sanchez's migration policy is as reckless as his rail policy," he said.
The far-right Vox party announced legal action against the measure. Its leadership said it would appeal to Spain's Supreme Court as soon as the decree was published, seeking precautionary measures to suspend its implementation.
Vox argued that bypassing parliament on an issue of such scale was unacceptable and accused European institutions of dangerous passivity, demanding a clear response from them.
Spain currently has about 49.4 million residents, including 7.1 million foreign nationals. An estimated 840,000 people were living in the country without authorisation at the start of 2025, according to the Funcas economic research institute.
The last major regularisation took place in 2005 under Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, from the same party as Sanchez.
The policy has been welcomed by migrant advocacy groups and the Catholic Church, which described it as an act of social justice, even as critics warn it sets Spain apart from a Europe moving steadily toward tougher migration controls.
