Brazilians in Portugal are choosing to move to Spain due to the AD Government’s tightening of immigration laws and the hostile environment they perceive against immigrants.
The Brazilian Paulo Geronimo hopes to be one of the beneficiaries of the extraordinary regularization process started in April, which aims to legalize the situation of thousands of immigrants already living in Spain. After seven years in Portugal, Geronimo moved to the neighboring country with his family in 2025.
“We had already managed to regularize our situation in Portugal, but, in recent years, we began to feel an increase in hostility towards Brazilians, with phrases like ‘turn to your land‘. We were also attracted by higher salaries. And we were lucky to move before the regularization process — which allows us to benefit,” says Paulo. With years of experience as a truck driver in Portugal, he has already secured the promise of a work contract in Spain and is developing an app to connect drivers and Spanish companies.
With a more positive official discourse regarding immigration and policies aimed at improving the living conditions of immigrants, Spain has followed a different path not only from the USA, but also from several European countries — among them, Portugal, which today hosts the largest Brazilian community in Europe (more than 500 thousand people).
Add to this the fact that Spain is one of the fastest growing economies in the European Union and it is not difficult to understand why Paulo’s story is far from being an isolated case.
In recent months — and with more intensity after the announcement of the extraordinary regularization — they have multiplied, in WhatsApp groups of Brazilians in Spainthe doubts of fellow countrymen living in Portugal about how (and whether it would be worth it) to move to the neighboring country. New groups have also emerged, some with hundreds of members, sharing practical information about change.
Interest is particularly strong in border regions, where changing countries often means, literally, crossing a bridge. And it doesn’t just come from immigrants in an irregular situation, but also from those who are already regularized. Mônica Rovaris, for example, a retired university professor with dual Brazilian and Italian citizenship, decided to move from the north of Portugal to Galiciain northwest Spain, with her husband and two children.
“Our impression is that Portugal did not know how to consider the increase in immigration very well: there is a climate of greater hostility and immigrant services have collapsed. My husband, who is Brazilian, had been waiting for two years to renew his residence visa”, says Mônica.
Based on data from the Spanish government, the Brazilian Consulate in Madrid estimates that the community of Brazilians officially residing in Spain will have reached 195 thousand people in 2025, compared to 156 thousand in 2022 — a increase of around 25% in just three years.
Migration squeeze in Portugal
In 2025, the center-right coalition that governs Portugal (Aliança Democrática, AD) joined the radical right Chega party, with a strong anti-immigration bias, to approve changes to the Foreigners Law. Among other measures, the new legislation eliminates the possibility of immigrants applying for residency after entering the country as tourists and tightens the rules on family reunification.
The Portuguese Parliament also approved this year a new Nationality Law, which extends from five to seven years the minimum time of residence required of Brazilians to apply for nationality and eliminates the automatic granting to children of immigrants born in Portugal.
The law was promulgated by the president, the former socialist leader António José Seguro, but the loss of nationality for those who commit crimes was . But even if there is any specific change, the expectation is that a tightening will be approved sooner or later.
“By 2024, Portugal had one of the most liberal immigration systems in Europe: anyone who arrived and found work could now regularize and, after five years, obtain nationality. Now that door has been closed“, says sociologist Pedro Góis, from the University of Coimbra.
In addition to legal changes, there are also signs of an increase in hostilities against immigrants. Data from the Annual Homeland Security Report (RASI) shows that, in 2025, there were registered 449 cases of discrimination and incitement to hatred and violence, up from 19 a decade ago. According to a recent survey by the Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation, 51% of Portuguese believe that the number of Brazilian immigrants should decrease.
Reports of discrimination in everyday life have become more frequent according to Brazilians interviewed by the BBC, and some cases of violence have caused great commotion in the community — such as the Brazilian boy who had his fingers cut off at school.
For Góis, the difference in the tone of migration policies between Portugal and Spain is explained, firstly, by the ideological orientation of the two governments. After eight years of socialist government, the center-right took power in Portugal in 2024, but without a parliamentary majority — which forces it to negotiate sometimes with the socialists, sometimes with Chega, today the second largest force in Parliament and which came in second place in this year’s presidential elections, with around 33% of the votes.
In Spain, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, from the center-left Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), has been in power since 2018. “This difference obviously directly influences the tone of policies and discourse. And it is a reminder that a possible alternation of government It could also lead to changes in migration policy”, says Góis.
The Spanish general elections are scheduled for 2027 and, at the moment, the average poll points to a tight dispute between the PSOE and the center-right Popular Party (PP), with a slight advantage for the latter. The PP promises a “profound reform” to, in its words, “putting order” in the Spanish migration system — including raising nationality requirements —, but without “closing the doors” and even facilitating some legal immigration routes, such as the work search visa. The polls, however, also indicate a possible strengthening (in relation to the 2023 result) of Vox, a radical right-wing party with a strong anti-immigration bias, with whom the PP could eventually have to make an agreement to form a government.
In addition to this political issue, according to Góis, there is also a difference in the scale of immigration between Spain and Portugal. Although Spain has received more immigrants in absolute terms in the last decade — around 2.5 million —, proportionally the increase was greater in Portugal. “Portugal currently has around 1.6 million immigrants in a population of 10 million, with approximately 1 million arriving in the last ten years. For Spain (with 49 million inhabitants), this would be equivalent to the arrival of almost 5 million people”, he says. “In Portugal, this volume brought a series of challenges, including overload of public services of immigration.”
Greater acceptance
So far, immigration seems to generate less polarization in Spain than in Portugal.
According to the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS), the Spanish public opinion polling institute, only 14.8% of Spaniards point out the issue as one of the country’s three main problems, behind housing (43.5%), economic situation (22.5%), quality of employment (18.4%) and “the performance of the government and specific parties or politicians” (15.4%).
Another survey by the 40dB research institute, released on May 4, showed that 38% of Spaniards are the in favor of extraordinary regularization for immigrants who were already in Spain by the end of December 2025 and 33% are against it. However, in the same survey 60% of respondents of Spanish nationality said that the number of immigrants in the country was already too high.
“The debate exists, but has not generated a more widespread conflict. There are specific tensions, not a massive confrontation”, summarizes Martínez Buján.
Claudia Finotelli, professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences and Sociology at the Complutense University of Madrid and director of the Migration Study Group, highlights that, beyond the discourse, the search for foreign workers is structural throughout Europe. “Even Italy — governed by Giorgia Meloni’s radical right — has announced so-called ‘flow decrees’ to thousands of foreign workers which are covert regularizations,” he says.
Góis, from the University of Coimbra, agrees: “In general, migration cycles in Europe tend to switch between greater openness and greater restrictionbut, in the long term, the region will need more workers to respond to the structural needs of its economy”, he comments. “Still, there is no doubt that the safest path for those who want to migrate are legal routes which, although slower, avoid situations of vulnerability, exploitation and uncertainty.”
