Spain Grants Legal Status to 500,000 Illegal Immigrants Under Royal Decree

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has said his government will approve a royal decree to regularize nearly half a million illegal immigrants.

Sánchez, a socialist, said in an April 14 post on X that the Council of Ministers will approve a royal decree launching the extraordinary regularization of people living in the country illegally, a process expected to affect nearly half a million individuals.

A royal decree is a legal measure approved by the government and formally enacted by the king of Spain, allowing policies to take effect without a full parliamentary process, according to Spain’s 1978 constitution (Articles 62 and 97).

He described the move as an act of “normalization” and “justice.”

“Today, once again, I feel proud to be Spanish,” Sánchez said.

Sánchez made the announcement while on an official visit to China, where he said in a April 14 post on X that “Spain is betting on an EU-China relationship based on trust, dialogue, and stability.”

The proposal was first presented on Jan. 27 to allow about 500,000 illegal immigrants already living and working in Spain to get legal status through an accelerated process.

The campaign for the measure began with a 2024 petition that received more than 600,000 signatures, backed by a number of nongovernmental organizations and Spain’s Catholic Episcopal Conference.

Details were shared by La Moncloa, the official seat of the Spanish government, who said in an April 14 social media post that the regularization would apply to individuals who have been in Spain since before Jan. 1, 2026, have remained for at least five uninterrupted months, and do not have a criminal record or “pose a threat to public order, security, or health.”

Irene Montero, a former equality minister and current MEP from the hard-left Podemos party, said in an April 14 post on X that the process could ultimately extend further, stating that up to 800,000 illegal immigrants should be granted papers.

She said that the process will “treat people as people and not as slaves,” and that efforts should continue “so that regularization reaches everyone.”

The government’s plan has drawn criticism from the opposition.

Santiago Abascal, leader of right-wing party Vox, said in an April 14 post on X: “Sánchez’s suicidal policies [will] collapse before they even begin. We’ll reverse it.”

With Spanish residence permits, regularized immigrants would be entitled to travel within the Schengen area of the European Union for up to 90 days in any 180-day period.

Marine Le Pen, leader of the right-wing National Rally party in France’s National Assembly, said the “decision will not be without consequences for France.”

She said in an April 14 post on X that it was “urgent to restrict freedom of movement within the Schengen Area to citizens of member states only.”

Spain has experienced large-scale immigration in recent years.

Over the past two years, Spain’s immigrant population has increased sharply; net external immigration exceeded 600,000 in 2024 alone, according to the Spanish National Statistics Institute.

Estimates suggest that there were about 686,000 illegal immigrants in Spain in early 2023, and that number rose toward 840,000 by 2025, although precise figures vary because illegal immigrants aren’t fully captured in official registries.

According to Spanish think tank Funcas, Spain recorded the second-highest number of first-time asylum applications in the European Union in 2024, accounting for about 164,000 claims, 18 percent of the bloc’s total of nearly 1 million applications.

Germany remained the top destination, receiving roughly one in four asylum applications across the EU.

Spain’s asylum seeker pool is different from that of several other EU countries.

Northern European states have received large numbers of applicants from the Middle East, while Spain has become a major destination for those from Latin America.

According to Funcas data, Venezuelans accounted for about 40 percent of first-time asylum applications in Spain, followed by Colombians at 24 percent. Peruvians represented a smaller share, about 6 percent.

Tens of thousands of migrants from West Africa and sub-Saharan Africa have been arriving illegally in recent years via sea and land routes to Spain, according to ACAPS, a humanitarian analysis organization that tracks displacement and immigration trends.

ACAPS stated that between January 2024 and June 2024, sea arrivals through the Western Mediterranean route numbered nearly 25,000, representing a 96 percent increase from the same period in 2023. Most are from West Africa, and the majority reach the Canary Islands.