Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez defends the decision in light of the country’s aging population and the need to keep public services fully staffed.
Spain’s Council of Ministers on Tuesday approved a royal decree that will give legal status to more than 500,000 unauthorized immigrants who currently reside in the country.
The move pits Spain’s left-wing coalition government against the center-right People’s Party, which is vowing to challenge the decree in the courts, not to mention the far-right Vox group, which wants the country’s irregular immigrants deported.
In an open letter posted on X, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said the measure acknowledges the existence of people in Spain “who already play their parts in our day to day lives” by taking care of the elderly, working in the country’s agricultural sector and creating thriving companies.
“These are the people who build the rich, open and diverse Spain that we have today,” he wrote. “And the country we aspire to have in the future.”
Sánchez said that as immigrants from Spain had historically flowed to other nations, the country had a moral obligation to welcome newcomers just as its own people had been embraced elsewhere. But he stressed that the status issue was also a pragmatic necessity.
“Spain, like other European countries, is growing older. If we do not take in new people to work and contribute to the social security system, our prosperity will slow, our capacity to innovate will decline, and our public services — health care, pension, education — will suffer,” he wrote, underlining that the country’s strong economic growth is partly due to the influx of foreign workers.
Any unauthorized immigrants who can prove they have been living in Spain for at least five months prior to Jan. 1, 2026 can benefit from the decree. Applicants must provide proof of employment or a familial link to the country; people with criminal records don’t qualify.
The measure has drawn praise from the Catholic Church, an unlikely ally for Sánchez’s left-wing coalition government. In an apparent nod to the church’s support for the scheme, applications for legal status will be accepted until June 30, the day Pope Leo is due to begin a week-long visit to Spain during which he is expected to dwell on the plight of immigrants.
Not everyone is a fan, however.
The People’s Party voted to have the Spanish parliament take up a legislative proposal to afford legal status to the country’s unauthorized immigrants in 2024, but the effort stalled. In the two years since then the conservatives have hardened their position. The PP is now against the drive, arguing it will cause problems in an EU that lacks internal borders.
“Spain is exporting a migration problem to the entire European Union,” PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo said Friday in Barcelona at the European Pulse Forum, an initiative of POLITICO and beBartlet, adding the move was “against the common European consensus.”
The party announced on Monday it would challenge the decree in court. Similar actions are likely to come from Vox, whose leader Santiago Abascal vowed to make Sánchez “pay” for legalizing immigrants. “The people will not forgive it,” he maintained.