Spain’s socialist-led coalition government has approved a decree that it says will regularise the status of around 500,000 undocumented migrants and asylum seekers, setting itself apart from the hardline anti-migration stance seen across much of Europe.
The measure, due to come into force in April, will apply to asylum seekers and people living in Spain without legal status. To qualify, applicants must prove they have no criminal record and that they had been living in Spain for at least five months, or had sought international protection, before 31 December 2025.
Speaking after Tuesday’s cabinet meeting, the minister for inclusion, social security and migration, Elma Saiz, described the decision as “a historic day”. She said the decree aimed to “break the bureaucratic barriers of the past”.
The policy is being introduced by royal decree, meaning it does not require parliamentary approval. Saiz said it would benefit Spain as a whole by strengthening a migration model based on human rights, integration and social cohesion, while supporting economic growth.
The decision followed pressure from the leftwing Podemos party, former allies of the Socialists, with whom the government has had a strained relationship.
Podemos’s leader, Ione Belarra, said the party had reached an agreement with the Socialists for the “extraordinary regularisation of undocumented people”. Writing on social media, she said: “No one else has to work without rights.”
In recent years, Spain has taken a markedly different approach to migration from many other European countries. In October 2024, the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, told parliament that Spain was at a demographic crossroads and needed migration to grow its economy and sustain its welfare state.
He said migration had historically driven the development of nations, while hatred and xenophobia had weakened them. “The key is in managing it well,” Sánchez said.
The move was welcomed by migrant rights organisations. Laetitia Van der Vennet, a senior advocacy officer at the Brussels-based Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (Picum), said the decision showed that regularisation was both possible and effective.
She said the measure could bring dignity, stability and access to basic rights for thousands of people who had built their lives in Spain, adding that it showed “both humanity and common sense” at a time of growing hostility towards migrants.
Spain’s Regularisation Now! movement also welcomed the decision, saying it came amid a wider European trend of tighter immigration controls, border closures and the criminalisation of migrants.
The decree has, however, drawn strong criticism from the conservative People’s party (PP) and the far-right Vox party.
The PP leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, accused Sánchez of using the announcement to distract from criticism of the government’s handling of last week’s deadly rail crash, which killed at least 45 people. He said the move would increase migration pressures and overwhelm public services. “In socialist Spain, illegality is rewarded,” he said.
Vox went further, accusing the government of encouraging what it described as a “pull effect”. Its leader, Santiago Abascal, used conspiracy-laden language, calling for mass deportations and so-called “remigration”.
Despite the controversy, regularisation programmes are not new in the European Union. Between 1996 and 2008, more than a dozen EU countries carried out 43 such initiatives. Spain itself has implemented nine regularisation programmes since its return to democracy, with the PP overseeing more of them than any other party.
The current push stems from a citizens’ initiative presented to parliament in 2024, backed by more than 700,000 signatures and around 900 civil society organisations.
High levels of migration have helped push Spain’s unemployment rate to its lowest level since 2008, while migrants have filled labour shortages created by an ageing population.
Even some of Europe’s most vocal critics of immigration have acknowledged its economic necessity. In June, Italy’s prime m,inister, Giorgia Meloni, said her government would issue nearly 500,000 new work visas for non-EU nationals in the coming years, on top of the 450,000 already granted since she took office.
