Almost a million irregular immigrants ask for legal status in Spain

The mass regularization process coincided with a broad reform of EU policies and the introduction of more restrictive migration rules.

The irregular migrant population in Spain is trying to obtain legal status under the country’s expanded regularization program, which ends this Tuesday.

The Spanish Government initially anticipated around 500,000 applications to the program, which allows you to request a residence and work permit of one year to anyone who arrived in Spain before January 1, 2026, has lived in the country for at least five months and has no criminal record.

However, the number of orders largely exceeded expectations. In mid-June, the Spanish authorities already counted around 900.000 applications.

In the final stretch of the deadline, the total would have reached around 1.27 million, according to , or around 1.3 million, according to data from the Mercurio platform cited by .

The regularization process results from a 2024 citizen initiativesupported by more than 700,000 Spaniardshundreds of humanitarian organizations, business associations and the Catholic Church.

In April, the Prime Minister’s Government Pedro Sanchez approved a decree that gave interested parties just over three months to submit applications and benefit from the scheme.

Around 360,000 of the applications submitted by mid-June had already been admitted, giving a provisional work and residence authorizationaccording to authorities.

Sánchez has defended the measure as a form of recognition for those who have already contributes to the Spanish economybut the regularization regime was contested by the Popular Partycenter-right, and the far-right party Vox. Last month, the Spanish Supreme Court rejected a request for a provisional suspension of the decree.

Mass regularization puts Madrid on a collision course with the migration policy currently favored in Brussels, notes .

Earlier this month, European institutions reached an agreement on new rules for accelerate migrant returns in an irregular situation and allow the creation of return centers outside the European Union for rejected asylum seekers.

The European Parliament later approved the text, which still requires formal approval by the governments of the 27.

Several EU governments have already advocated for these centers to be created quicklywith countries such as Denmark, Austria, Greece, Germany and the Netherlands leading this pressure.

In a letter sent, at the beginning of this month, to the permanent representatives of EU Member States, the Spanish Government expressed its opposition to the new policies, invoking “the serious legal, external relations and operational doubts raised by return centers, as well as the lack of proportionality of certain measures”.

Alternatively, Spain called on the EU to adopt migration rules based on “full respect for international and European Union law“.