Spain’s administrative infrastructure is buckling under the weight of a mass migrant regularisation programme, with registry offices across the country overwhelmed by surging demand just days after the socialist government approved legal status for up to 500,000 undocumented migrants.
Applications opened on Thursday following a cabinet meeting earlier in the week at which Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s government formally endorsed the initiative. Within hours, queues had formed outside more than 400 locations nationwide, with migrants waiting as long as five hours in some cities to have their documents officially processed.
The situation in Seville has been described as a “collapse” by municipal unions representing registry staff. The unions — SPPME-A, SEM and SAB — warned that overcrowding and “extraordinary pressure” were undermining service quality and generating significant tension among both workers and members of the public. They called on the city council to act immediately, arguing the crisis was entirely foreseeable given the scale of the amnesty. Demands for additional staffing, improved security measures and compensation for workers managing the chaos have so far been met with reassurances from Seville City Council that the service is operating “normally.”
Madrid is facing comparable strain. Jose Fernandez, the city’s municipal delegate for Social Policies, said daily requests at social services centres had surged from 1,500 to 5,500 almost overnight. “I think a hasty decision was made, perhaps even intended to create a collapse,” he said, adding that the process had been launched “without consulting the relevant authorities.” He called for the decree to be withdrawn and reimplemented through consensus.
In Barcelona, some migrants camped outside registry offices overnight to secure their place in the queue. One Colombian man told local media he had arrived at around 10 or 11pm and waited approximately 15 hours. A Honduran migrant described sleeping on the floor while waiting, saying a large group “almost trampled” him. Reports of aggression have also emerged from Almeria, where one woman described a man screaming and throwing bottles of water as frustration in the queues boiled over.
The policy has drawn fierce opposition from Spain’s right-wing parties. The Popular Party has branded it reckless, while Vox leader Santiago Abascal accused the government of accelerating what he called an “invasion.” Isabel Diaz Ayuso, president of the Madrid community and a senior Popular Party figure, has threatened legal action. Vox has similarly pledged to challenge the measure before the Supreme Court. The backlash has extended beyond Spanish politics, with Elon Musk posting on X that Sanchez was “guilty of high treason.”
Sanchez has defended the measure robustly, framing immigration as essential to sustaining Spain’s ageing population and growing economy. The country’s GDP expanded by 2.8 per cent last year — more than double the eurozone average — and unemployment has fallen below ten per cent for the first time since 2008. “Without more people working and contributing to the economy, our prosperity slows, and our public services suffer,” the Prime Minister wrote in an open letter to citizens last week.
Critics, however, point to the uneven distribution of those benefits. Around 90 per cent of new jobs have gone to immigrants in recent years, while income per person has barely grown. A widening gap between housing demand — 140,000 new households annually — and supply, with only around 80,000 new homes built each year, has made affordable housing a flashpoint issue for Spanish voters and a growing source of social friction.
There are currently an estimated 840,000 undocumented migrants in Spain, the majority from Latin America, according to figures from the Funcas think tank. Spain’s total population of 50 million now includes around ten million people born abroad.
