The government of Spain, led by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of the country’s Socialist Workers’ Party, has announced that it is giving a one-year residency and work permit in an amnesty scheme to nearly 500,000 migrants who had entered the country illegally.
Controversially, this does not come as an act of parliament, as the Sánchez administration did not have the votes to pass such a measure. Instead, it was announced in the state gazette as a decree approved by the executive cabinet.
The migrants have to prove that they had lived in the country for at least five months before 31 December 2025 and have no criminal record in order to be eligible for the amnesty. This comes at a time when virtually every other Member State in the European Union has been tightening its border control, due to popular discontent about mass migration.
Santiago Abascal, the leader of the right-wing Vox Party in the Spanish legislature, has harshly criticized the measure, writing on social media: ‘The tyrant Sanchez hates the Spanish people. He wants to replace them.’
He has accused the Prime Minister of trying to buy votes by eventually giving these migrants citizenship as well, despite their lack of sufficient knowledge about the Spanish language and culture; and opined that he has to resort to such an act because he has lost so much support from the native Spanish people.
This is not the first highly controversial move by Prime Minister Sánchez involving amnesty.
After his party came in second in the popular vote in the 2023 Spanish election, he brokered a deal with Catalan separatists to stay in power. In that ‘corrupt bargain’, he offered amnesty to the leaders of the separatist movement, who had been charged with crimes related to a failed secession attempt by Catalonia in 2017.
Mainstream Media in Europe Rejoice at Amnesty for Spanish Illegals
While the Spanish right-wing is understandably upset at the ‘carte blanche’ given to half a million illegals, there are plenty in the Western mainstream media who feel quite the opposite way about the development.
The British newspaper The Guardian ran a ‘human interest story’ piece on their online publication with a Bangladeshi immigrant in focus, who described the decision by the left-wing Spanish government as ‘like a gift from God’. Needless to say, the young man entered Spain illegally, and scraped together a living by selling cheap umbrellas on the street, earning €200–€400 a month. He now welcomes his access to the country’s taxpayer-funded, socialized health care system, and his ability to get integrated into the Spanish labour market.
In a similar tone, VisaHQ.com claims that the move to give permits to masses of illegal migrants is ‘hailed as lifeline for half a million undocumented workers’ in their headline.
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