If we look at the numbers with the cold detachment of those who live by numbers, nine hundred thousand is not a surprise. AND 20 percent more than what Pedro Sánchez’s government had estimated, it is almost double the regularization of 2005 when 691,655 applications arrived. But the numbers, when they shine a light on human reality, stop being cold: nine hundred thousand means nine hundred thousand people who already live in Spain, who already work in Spain, who already have roots and family and stories in Spain, and who will finally be able to say to themselves: I am not invisible. And the deadline? Two more weeks. On June 30th the gate will close, but for those days the path towards ordinariness remains open, towards the right to stay where one has chosen to stay.
The extraordinary regularization was launched on 16 April, with a well-defined time window until the end of June. But this window was enough to reveal a reality that the institutions had underestimated. The government had expected between 500 and 750 thousand applicants; the most optimistic NGO polls spoke of 840 thousand. 900 thousand arrived. Indeed, two weeks before the deadline there were already 900 thousand, which means that the final figure could easily reach one million. It’s not an administrative error, it’s not an overestimation. It is the exact measure of how great the need for order, rights and dignity was among hundreds of thousands of people who were already living in economic and social secrecy, often in occupational secrecy in the most literal sense: they worked, paid contributions, were included in the country’s economic systems, but in the shadows.
Let’s go back to the numbers, but this time with the right eyes. Of the 900 thousand applications, 360 thousand have already obtained the communication of acceptance, which immediately authorizes them to reside and work legally. For the government, each regularized person will generate between 3,300 and 4,000 euros of net tax benefit per year. But these are not abstract numbers: it is the deductions that are starting to become legitimate, it is the contracts that stop being in the black, it is the family doctors who no longer ask the police officer for a furtive glance. In April, in the initial days of regularization, Madrid had queues at the counters filling the streets. Logistical problems, vulnerability certificates impossible to obtain in time, social security numbers delivered with unnerving delays. But the system held up, it normalized. This is important to note: The administration has learned from its initial chaos.
The majority of those who applied come from Spanish-speaking Latin American countries. For them the path to citizenship is accelerated: two years of legal residence is enough. With regularization, they have a renewable authorization for at least one year for at least another year. They are people who entered regularly, with tourist visas, and then stayed because the reality of the country had captured their plans. Either because there was no work in their country, or because the violence was advancing. And here they had found communities, networks, spaces where their effort made sense. Now that meaning becomes legal, official, recognized.
Spain has become, almost against Europe’s expectations, the economic driving force of the continent. Since 2020 it has generated a quarter of new jobs across the European Union. Its economy is growing three, four times more than France, Germany and Italy. Migrants represent 15 percent of all Spanish workers. I am not a burden: I am a structure that holds. In May the country recorded a historic record of 3.36 million foreign workers, an increase of 111 thousand units in one month. Each digit of the regularization will add momentum to these numbers.
Yet the political reality is divided. The centre-right Popular Party, which initially was not opposed, has progressively shifted its position to the right, and in the regions where it governs together with the far right it has approved “national priority” measures which favor Spaniards in accessing public services. It is the political cost of regularization: reopening the migration issue in a Europe where the right is gaining ground. There is also the theme of home. The last ten years have seen property prices in large cities grow by 48 percent, rents by 39 percent in the last five years.
More people means more pressure on already stressed housing markets. It is a legitimate concern even if, as always happens, it does not look at the fact that it is housing policies that really determine the housing emergency, not people looking for a roof.
But regularization remains one of the great acts of a government that has chosen a different path from that of Fortress Europe. Zapatero chose it in 2005, Sánchez has chosen it now. It is a path that says: these people already live here, they already have value, they already have rights, only that the law must ratify reality. That’s what 900 thousand questions are saying.
That the need for order, dignity, belonging is greater than what the institutions imagined. That people would much rather live in the light than in the shadows. And that nine hundred thousand is not a number, it’s a tide.
