SPAIN’S migrant regularisation plan has closed with 1.2 million applications, more than 600,000 of which have already secured a temporary permit to live and work in the country.
The final tally is more than double the 500,000 the government originally forecast when the scheme launched in April.Â
Migration Secretary of State Pilar Cancela said the figures reflected ‘the historic effort’ made by officials and civil society ‘so that nobody was left out of this process.’
Of the 1,174,978 applications received, 609,737 – just over half – have been admitted for processing, according to the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration.
Admission alone triggers an automatic temporary permit to live and work anywhere in the country, valid until a final ruling is made.
Four regions account for two out of every three applications.
Catalunya leads with 257,602, followed by the Community of Madrid on 202,424, the Comunitat Valenciana on 167,286 and Andalucia on 161,557.
Castilla-La Mancha, the Basque Country and Murcia each drew between 45,000 and 52,000 applications, with Castilla y Leon, Galicia, the Canary Islands and the Balearics each passing 30,000.
READ MORE: Spain’s migrant regularization scheme ends tomorrow – with 350,000 work permits already granted
Colombians make up the largest single group, with almost 26% of all applications, ahead of Moroccans on 13.3%, Venezuelans on 11.8%, Peruvians on 8.8% and Hondurans on 4.9%.
Two out of every three applicants come from Central or South America, with 22.9% from Africa and 8.3% from Asia.
The scheme has landed in the middle of a record year for Spanish employment. Social Security registered 22.4 million people in June, up 605,244 on a year earlier – a 2.8% rise, the fastest since May 2023.
Foreigners are growing four times faster than the native workforce as a whole, reaching 3.4 million in June, up 350,163 on a year ago, an 11.3% rise.
Foreigners now accounts for 15.3% of everyone in work in Spain.
Deputy Prime Minister Yolanda Diaz has directly linked the jobs record to the regularisation.
The record ‘coincides’ with a process that has allowed undeclared work ‘to surface’ and start gaining rights, she said.
The ministry itself is more cautious: it says 159,097 people with an admitted file are now registered with Social Security, but has not clarified how many of those jobs exist purely because of the scheme.
Some 565,241 applications – just under half the total – have not yet been admitted for processing.
That does not mean they have been rejected: officials say every file will receive a formal decision, and the government has three months from the point of admission to rule on each case.
A separate estimate, not confirmed by the ministry directly, put the number of applications fully resolved currently at around 11,000 – less than 1% of total applicants.
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