More regularization myths and misinformation, with a sprinkle fear-mongering from the judiciary

By: Erina Bazán López

July 8, 2026

HRRC supports Spain's regularization process as a lawful and necessary measure to protect workers' rights and formalize the economy. We call on the Spanish government to defend this process and process all 1.2 million applications efficiently. We caution that letting the Supreme Court challenge proceed unchecked would set a dangerous precedent, allowing supranational courts to block democratically-enacted national laws and harm vulnerable workers and families who depend on this process for stability. Furthermore, we urge Spanish media outlets to cease flooding media spaces with misinformation, report the facts, and maintain a level of professionalism, self-respect and decorum. For those wanting to get an idea of the media landscape in Spain, I’d recommend looking into the most reputable media outlets on both sides of the political spectrum (Agencia EFE, El País, El Mundo, OkDiario and El Confidencial).

Lines in Valencia City Hall to apply for the regularization of migrants [Image credit: Mònica Torres. EL PAIS]

On June 30, 2026, the deadline concluded for thousands of people in an irregular administrative situation to apply for extraordinary regularization in Spain. The process, which began on April 16, has overwhelmed the government's initial forecasts: instead of the originally estimated half a million beneficiaries, nearly 1.2 million applications have been registered. This administrative milestone seeks to surface the underground economy and grant labor rights to those who resided in the country before January 1, 2026. Despite the success in participation, the closure of the process has been marked by a new wave of misinformation and legal challenges brought before the European justice system. 

Shortly after the deadline, the Spanish Supreme Court raised the possibility of submitting a preliminary ruling to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) to clarify whether the Spanish decree violates the 2024 EU Migration and Asylum Pact (PMAUE). The court has identified six possible points of collision, questioning whether a European Union Member State can carry out "massive" regularization unilaterally and without prior coordination with Luxembourg, where its base is located.

For its part, the Ministry of Migration has demonstrated a calm response, ensuring the rule was drafted to strictly ensure compatibility with community law, and reminding applicants that the permit granted is valid exclusively within Spanish territory. 

However, the current Spanish media landscape economically favours novelty and speed instead of objective, comprehensible, factual, confirmed or supported claims. This has resulted in a vacuum of trusted sources where opportunists can easily get away with deceitful or manipulated news to profit off of, especially when it comes to areas that have their own technical vocabulary, such as legislation. But the media landscape is currently shaped in ways that facilitate making claims regardless of whether they are supported or unsupported, are factual or opinion-based, are biased to one side or the other, etc. Given the writing style of most national and supranational legislation, therefore, anyone who doesn’t have a relative who’s a lawyer will face challenges understanding.

The Spanish regularization process is a mechanism that has already been utilised six times since the establishment of democracy in the nation. This most recent one is grounded in Article 31.3 of Organic Law 4/2000 (Ley de Extranjería), which empowers the administration to grant temporary residence permits for social ties (arraigo), humanitarian reasons, or "exceptional circumstances", as determined by regulation. Royal Decree 316/2026 modifies the existing regulation to create two specific pathways:

1. Arraigo for International Protection Seekers, which allows those who applied for asylum before January 1, 2026 and have pending resolutions, to access residency. 

2. The other pathway is the extraordinary Arraigo, which is aimed at individuals with established links to Spain (labor, family, or social vulnerability) who arrived before the 2026 cutoff.

From the European Union side, the 2024 EU Pact on Migration and Asylum becomes relevant as it seeks to establish "fast and efficient procedures for asylum and return" and a "fair and effective system of solidarity and responsibility". While Article 79 of the TFEU (Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union) grants the EU competence to manage migration flows, it explicitly preserves the right of Member States to determine the volumes of admission for third-country nationals seeking work.

Just as at the start of the process, the closing of applications has reactivated false narratives seeking to undermine the legitimacy of the measure.

For starters, content has circulated widely claiming the European Parliament has stopped Spain’s process of regularization. This is false; what was approved is a modification of the EU return regulation to create centers outside community territory, a regulation that does not affect the ongoing Spanish administrative process.

Then, alongside other racist and xenophobic misinformation on social media through the duration of this process, viral content claimed the process would "turn 500,000 Africans into Spaniards". In reality, 91% of irregular foreigners come from the Americas (especially Colombia, Peru, and Honduras), and regularization does not automatically grant nationality, which requires between 2-10 years of prior legal residence.

Besides this racist fearmongering, there have been attempts circulating to generate unrest by claiming the Government vetoed Ukrainians from the process. This is entirely misleading; people displaced by the war in Ukraine already have residence and work permits under the European temporary protection directive, so they do not need to apply for this extraordinary regularization.

Furthermore, there have been notices circulated urging people to check their municipal register (padrón) due to supposed illegal registrations at private addresses to facilitate regularization illegally. However, the padrón is not an indispensable requirement for this procedure, as stay can be proven with any dated public or private document, such as a rental contract or mail with the address on it sent to the individual.

The JUPOL (Justicia Policial// national police of Spain) union has claimed that approximately 400,000 applications could be fraudulent, alleging that mafias have taken advantage of "lax" requirements. The Government maintains that the system has strict filters, including the verification of criminal records from Spain as well as the country of origin.

Alongside these topics, the news in Spain has been flooded by the striking news that Spanish Supreme Court (Tribunal Supremo) has identified six critical areas where the regularization via Royal Decree potentially violates the 2024 EU Pact:

1. The Court questions if a "massive" regularization of the entire resident irregular population is permissible under the new common EU rules.

2. The regulation requires the archiving of existing expulsion or return procedures for those admitted to the regularization process. The Court argues this directly contradicts the Pact’s mandate for "efficient return management".

3. Under Article 4(3) of the TEU (Treaty on European Union), Member States must coordinate on matters affecting the Union. The Court notes Spain acted without prior notification to the European Commission or coordination with other Member States.

4. The Court claims that the Pact does not justify granting residency permits to individuals who have not even requested international protection.

5. Regularized individuals receive a temporary permit allowing free movement within the Schengen area, a decision the Court claims Spain made without consulting its EU partners.

6. The Court suggests that a "mere political decision" for mass regularization may invade the principle of solidarity that now governs EU migration management.

   
   

To determine the validity of these concerns, they must be weighed against the legislative evidence and the state’s stated objectives.

The Supreme Court’s objection regarding the suspension of return orders has significant legal merit. The 2024 EU Pact that recently went into effect, emphasizes that the migration policy is only sustainable if those without the right to stay are effectively returned. Halting judicial return orders for a political regularization process presents a clear conflict with the Return Border Procedure Regulation that the EU has been strongly pushing for. However, the economic “exceptional circumstances” that the Spanish government has sustained this regularization process falls directly under higher ranked EU legislation, namely TFEU Article 79.5 This Article shall not affect the right of Member States to determine volumes of admission of third-country nationals coming from third countries to their territory in order to seek work, whether employed or self-employed.

The transition from the Dublin Regulation to the 2024 Pact shifted migration from a strictly national prerogative to a "common European challenge". The Supreme Court considers Spain's unilateral or solitary action tests the limits of the "Loyal Cooperation" principle in an integrated Union, but whether any or every competency of the Member State regarding migration can be expected to require common European approval could be considered an infringement of national sovereignty, and has yet to be demanded by the EU.

Then there are the criticisms suggesting the process is a gateway for criminals, which lack factual weight based on the legislative text. Article 126 and the new Additional Provisions mandate the absence of criminal records in Spain and the country of origin, alongside a mandatory police report assessing threats to public order.

The government is justifying the "worth" of the process through demographic necessity. By late 2025, foreign workers comprised 14.1% of Social Security affiliates. The reform aims to transition individuals from the “underground economy" into the formal tax-paying workforce to ensure the sustainability of the welfare state, which the current data from this process would agree with.

Besides all of this, which has occupied the majority of the space regarding this very controversial matter in Spanish media, what has not had remotely enough attention is the public information that the EU Commission already established in January that the process was legal. Moreover, the Commission refused to comment on the threats the right wing parties Partido Popular and Vox made to take the process to the EU in order to have it halted. 

The EU Commission finally had to comment on the Supreme Court’s ongoing judicial process that had been raised, explaining that the matter is not their jurisdiction. 

They went so far as to have the European Commissary of  Internal Affairs and Migration, Magnus Brunner, publicly respond to this ongoing pandemonium surrounding the regularization process. He stated that not only is the department aware of the law that set up this recent process in Spain, but that it is evidently a subject matter under the Spanish Member State’s own authority where the EU Commission has no grounds to interfere. 

Spain’s President Pedro Sánchez has defended the measure with long-term projections: without the contribution of immigration, Spain would lose 19% of its GDP by the year 2050, leading to the mass closure of agricultural farms and basic services.

Against the political noise, data from June 2026 shows an immediate positive impact on the labor market. Spain gained 128,533 Social Security affiliates, marking the best month of June since the pandemic. Of these new positions, two out of every three were filled by foreigners, reaching a historic record of 3.4 million immigrant workers contributing to the system in a country of 47,869,280 inhabitants. Furthermore, the discrepancy between this data and the media’s focus on coverage about the groundless possibility of the regularization being halted for going against any EU norm, as well as the misinformation surrounding the process, points to a dangerous pattern of the media trying their best to focus the people’s attention to things that are entirely irrelevant or even unsubstantiated. 

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Glossary

• Asylum: the protection or security afforded by an asylum

• Arraigo: Person with roots in the community . To have roots in the community.

• Beneficiaries: person or thing that receives help or an advantage from something : one that benefits from something.

• Community law (EU): The law of the European Community (as opposed to the national laws of the member states.) It consists of the treaties establishing the EC (together with subsequent amending treaties) community legislation, and decisions of the court of justice of the European Communities.

• Compatibility: the quality or state of being compatible : the capacity of two or more entities to combine or remain together without undesirable aftereffects : mutual tolerance.

• Competence: legal authority, ability, or admissibility.

• Criminal record: an official record of crimes that a person has committed

• Decorum: the quality or state of being decorous, or exhibiting such dignified propriety; orderliness; regularity.

• Decree: an order usually having the force of law.

• Demographic: a group of people

• Discrepancy: a difference between two things that should be the same.

• Dublin Regulation: Regulation establishing the criteria and mechanisms for determining the Member State responsible for examining an asylum application lodged in one of the Member States by a third-country national.

• Explicitly: in an explicit manner; clearly and without any vagueness or ambiguity.

• Expulsion or return procedures: administrative sanction that requires a non-EU foreign national to leave Spanish territory and, in many cases, it is linked to an entry ban that may affect not only Spain but also the Schengen Area. 

• False narratives: a deliberately misleading account or storyline that is perpetuated for specific purposes, such as gaining political advantage or manipulating public opinion.

• Fearmongering: the action of intentionally trying to make people afraid of something when this is not necessary or reasonable.

• Fraudulent: intended to deceive people for the purpose of obtaining money or property.

• Free movement: legal permission for goods, capital, services, or workers to leave one country and enter another country without extra taxes, legal documents, official limits, etc.

• Indispensable: too important not to have; necessary.

• Infringement: an action that breaks a rule, law, etc.

• Irregular immigrants: third-country nationals who do not fulfil, or no longer fulfil, the conditions of entry as set out in Article 5 of the Schengen Borders Code or other conditions for entry, stay or residence in that Member State.

• Lax: not severe or strong enough.

• Loyal Cooperation: in accordance with the treaties, the common legal order must be recognised and respected by every member state.

• Mechanism: a process, technique, or system for achieving a result.

• Member State: a country that is one of several other countries that form a political or economic organization.

• Misinformation: incorrect or misleading information.

• Municipal register: the administrative register where municipality residents are recorded. 

• Norm: a principle of right action binding upon the members of a group and serving to guide, control, or regulate proper and acceptable behavior.

• Organic Law: in Spanish law refers to a law related to fundamental rights and freedoms and important institutional areas as defined by the Constitution (including inter alia, statutes on autonomy, referendums and electoral processes, functioning and organisation on the Constitutional Tribunal, the organisation on the military and the succession on the throne).

• Pandemonium: a situation in which there is a lot of noise and confusion because people are excited, angry, or frightened.

• Permit: a written warrant or license granted by one having authority.

• Preliminary ruling: when a national court asks the Court of Justice of the EU questions on how to interpret EU law or if EU legislation is valid.

• Prerogative: something that certain people are able or allowed to do or have, but is not possible or allowed for everyone.

• Public order: individual or group acts which interfere with society and the ability of others to function effectively.

• Regularization: a State’s policy response to the presence of irregular migrants residing in the country. IOM provides Member States with technical assistance and policy guidance in managing regularization procedures.

• Return Border Procedure Regulation (EU): Applicants whose asylum claims are rejected, are transferred to the return border procedure for a maximum of 12 weeks. 

• Social Security affiliates (Spain): The Social Security Treasury General assigns a Social Security Number to each citizen to identify them in their relations with the System. It is also assigned to the beneficiaries of pensions or other benefits (public health, unemployment subsidies…) from the System.

• Social vulnerability: the demographic and socioeconomic factors (such as poverty, lack of access to transportation, and crowded housing) that adversely affect communities that encounter hazards and other community-level stressors. These stressors can include natural or human-caused disasters (such as tornadoes or chemical spills) or disease outbreaks (such as COVID-19).

• Solidarity (EU principle): EU institutions, academics and other stakeholders to propose different ways to render solidarity more operational; these include sharing out relevant tasks and pooling resources at EU level, and providing financial and other forms of compensation for frontline Member States. 

• Sovereignty: the power that a country has to govern itself or another country or state.

• Supranational: transcending national boundaries, authority, or interests.

• Temporary protection directive: an exceptional measure. It is meant to provide immediate and temporary protection in the event of a mass influx or imminent mass influx of displaced persons from non-EU countries, who are unable to return to their country of origin. 

• Third-country nationals:  workers who are not nationals of one of the Member States of the European Union, the European Economic Area (EEA) or Switzerland.

• Underground economy: transaction of goods or services not reported to the government and therefore beyond the reach of tax collectors and regulators. The term may refer either to illegal activities or to ordinarily legal activities performed without the securing of required licenses and payment of taxes.

• Unilaterally: done or undertaken by one person or party.

• Unsubstantiated: not proven to be true : not substantiated.

• Vetoed: to refuse to allow something.

• Xenophobic: fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign.