The phones in Antonio Segura’s immigration law office in Barcelona ring non-stop, manned by three frazzled receptionists.
On metal seats along the clinical white corridors, people from Colombia, Pakistan and Peru wait patiently, clutching papers and passports. Everyone is here for the same reason — they are undocumented immigrants who, thanks to Spain’s new regularisation law, announced last month, will be allowed the chance to live and work in the country legally.
Segura emerges from one of the doors in a fug of cigarette smoke and ushers in his next client, Wendy Xiomana Gonzales, from Choluteca in Honduras, holding her four-month old daughter, Ivonne. Gonzales, 31, came to Spain four years ago and started work as a carer for the elderly.
“Those who have papers, they have a better salary. Double pay,” she said, while Ivonne gurgles in her lap. “I don’t have rights, no holidays, and if I am injured at work there is nothing to protect me.”
Antonio Segura, the immigration lawyer, with Wendy Xiomana Gonzales, 31, and her baby daughter Ivonne
She left Honduras because of the gangs and crime. “You have to be locked up at home by 7pm at night or else it’s unsafe.” Gonzales, along with her partner, who is also undocumented and from Guatemala, is overjoyed at the news of the new law.
“I want to work. I want to contribute. I want to pay taxes so I can walk the streets in peace,” she said.
His next client is Marco Antonio Lazaro, a 39-year-old Peruvian construction worker, who came initially on a tourist visa. “I’m very grateful to Spain,” he said. “Because they opened the door for me.” Three years ago, he left his two daughters, when they were aged 11 and four months, and his wife. “I have a little girl who doesn’t know me.”
With papers, he will be able to travel freely back and forth and start the process of having them join him in Spain. “There is respect here, I like that about Europe,” said Lazaro. “There is stability, and the health and education system, too.”
Queues at Pakistan’s consulate in Barcelona on January 30
ALBERT GEA/REUTERS
While other western nations are pursuing tougher immigration policies, Spain is moving in the opposite direction. The “regularisation” policy, announced in January by the Socialist-led coalition government of Pedro Sánchez, the prime minister, will allow an estimated 500,000 undocumented migrants already living in Spain to apply to regularise their status, granting temporary residence and the right to work. Applicants must demonstrate a clean criminal record, prove they were in Spain before December 31, 2025, and show at least five months of continuous residence in the country.
The finite window for applications is expected to run from April to June although details are yet to be announced.
Some have disputed the government’s predictions: last week, the Spanish police put the number of undocumented migrants already living there as high as 1.35 million.
This is the sixth regularisation programme in Spain’s history and the fourth by a socialist government. Vox, the far-right party, has pledged to challenge the law before the Constitutional Court of Spain, arguing it will attract more migrants and act as a “pull factor”.
Santiago Abascal, the president of Vox, posted on social media: “Sánchez hates the Spanish people. He wants to replace them.” He said that after the introduction of the law “there will be many more … and afterwards other millions will come in a process that will never end”.
While the law has won support from religious leaders, other political parties, unions and charities, it has had its detractors.
Two weeks ago, the Sánchez government suffered a catastrophic defeat in the regional election of Aragon — which has a reputation as a bellwether — with the far-right making substantial gains. The regularisation law was among key issues that were unpopular with Aragon’s rural farming population, as well as EU agricultural subsidies, the recent train crash in Cordoba, and multiple political corruption scandals. The socialists lost five seats, holding 18 in total, whereas Vox won 14 seats, doubling its share from 2023’s election. A general election will take place next year.
Data suggests that the new law does have broad support from the Spanish public. Polling from the European Social Survey in 2024, which asked how Spaniards rate the impact of migration on the economy — from 0 (very bad) to 10 (very good) — produced an average score of 6.2, one of the highest in the EU.
A far-right demonstration in Madrid on February 7
ALEJANDRO MARTINEZ VELEZ/REUTERS
The policy was spearheaded by the umbrella organisation Regularizacion Ya!, which represents migrants and anti-racist collectives.
Ruben Romero, head of policy at Regularizacion Ya! said: “It is a reality that we have those people with that undocumented situation in our country and we have to provide them with documentation so that they can contribute economically, socially, culturally.”
Romero disputes the idea that the policy will open the floodgates to a wave of migration. He also pointed to the European Pact of Migration and Asylum, which will come into effect in June, and includes screening, deportations and a shared responsibility between EU countries for migrants.
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The government’s reasoning for the new law is largely economic. Writing in The New York Times this month, Sánchez said the decision was “purely pragmatic”, adding: “The West needs people. Currently, few of its countries have a rising population growth rate. Unless they embrace migration, they will experience a sharp demographic decline that will prevent them from keeping their economies and public services afloat. Their gross domestic products will stagnate.”
Javier Vázquez-Grenno, associate professor of economics at the Universitat de Barcelona, has studied the effects of previous regularisation laws, including one in 2004 by the socialist government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, which regularised 600,000 migrants.
“What we found was an increase in formal employment in general,” Vázquez-Grenno said. “We estimate for each regularised immigrant, social security contributions increased by €4,000 per year.”
If this government succeeds in regularising the status of half a million migrants, it could generate more than €3 billion in tax revenues. “All these migrants [already] have access to many services like health care, education. If you think only in economic terms, this is a way to make people who are using the services pay taxes,” Vázquez-Grenno added.
The Spanish economy is something of an outlier in Europe, having grown by 2.9 per cent in 2025. Vázquez-Grenno is careful not to attribute this solely to migration, though he said it “plays a big role”, because most of this growth is related to low-skilled work in these sectors. However, he said there were other problems in the Spanish economy: stagnant wages, inflation, housing and high unemployment. Spain has one of the highest unemployment rates in the EU, at 10 per cent.
Some businesses actively lobbied the government for the regularisation law, including Catalonia’s main employers group, Foment del Treball. Some key industries, including agriculture, tourism and hospitality, say they have been forced to hire undocumented migrants in recent years to bolster their workforces. National statistics show that vacancies are at a record high this year — more than 150,000 jobs.
Spain is also set to be affected by its ageing population, and is in second place on a list of countries where the proportion of pensioners will rise the most over the next 25 years, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
The increasing imbalance between the working-age population, who make social security contributions, and the older-age population, who rely on those contributions to fund their pensions, is set to create a persistent funding gap. Age-related public expenditure, including pensions, is set to rise from 20 per cent of Spain’s GDP to 26 per cent by 2050.
The imbalance is exacerbated by Spain’s generous pension offering. Pensioners receive on average 65 per cent of their previous salary upon retirement, compared with the average EU pensioner who receives 39 per cent.
Data from Frontex, the European border agency, estimates there were more than 19,000 irregular arrivals to Spain last year, the majority of whom came from Algeria and Morocco, up 14 per cent compared with 2024.
Some of them made up the hundreds of people queuing outside the Moroccan consulate in Barcelona earlier this month for certificates showing a clean criminal record.
Migrants outside the Moroccan consulate in Barcelona
KATIE GATENS
Across the road, Muhamad el Gharnati, a 25-year-old Moroccan-born window cleaner, holds his criminal record certificate. He arrived in Spain on foot nearly two years ago after first reaching Turkey. “Two weeks ago my friend called me up and said: ‘Have you seen the news?’ We couldn’t believe it,” he said.
He earns €500 a month, working ad-hoc. “When I have documents I’ll be paid double — life will be good.” Without official documents, he also worries about his safety if something were to go wrong.
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Funcas, the think tank, estimates that of the 840,000 undocumented migrants in Spain, 91 per cent are originally from Latin America. Colombians ranked first, with an estimated 290,000 migrants.
While the majority of undocumented African and Asian migrants in Spain probably arrived on small boats, those from the Latin American community are more likely to be overstayers.
One such overstayer is Alexander Canon Acosta, 30, from Colombia. He studied mechanical engineering in Bogota before being accepted onto a master’s programme to study aerospace engineering in Bilbao in 2023. He graduated in 2024 and, desperate to find employment before his visa ran out, started working as an engineer at a wine company outside of Madrid.
However, his employer neglected to apply for his permission to work. He became stuck in a catch-22 situation: “I couldn’t apply for a visa because I needed a job offer — and I already had a job.”
The Colombian has been undocumented for almost two years and quit his job in December in order to apply for a work visa. He is relying on savings, unable to leave the country and is frightened when he sees police in the street. “I don’t know if I have bad luck or if I have been doing things wrong,” he said.
He has considered going back to Colombia but there are no jobs there in aerospace engineering. “I thought I was coming here to do a master’s and it would really help my career. Instead it’s been years of uncertainty. Since I quit my job I have been doing basically nothing.”
He had little hope of ever getting the correct documentation until last month. He hopes that soon he will finally be able to work in Spain. “All I want to do is to design satellites,” he said.