Overview
- The Ministry of Inclusion reported 1,174,978 applications and said roughly 52% (about 608,000–610,000) have been admitted to trámite, a status that immediately confers provisional permission to live and work in Spain after the June 30 application window closed.
- Applications are concentrated in a few regions, led by Catalonia (≈257,000), Madrid (≈202,000), Valencia (≈167,000) and Andalusia (≈161,000), and 67% of applicants come from Central and South America with Colombia alone accounting for about 25–26%.
- The Policía Nacional activated a 'plan de choque' that opened extra documentation units, added evening and Saturday shifts and set overtime pay to speed issuance of foreign ID cards, while unions warn of large IT backlogs and roughly half a million files still needing data entry into the Mercurio system.
- The regularization has had immediate labour-market effects: by June 30 some 159,097 people had registered in Social Security, mainly in hospitality and commerce, with most of those registered under the general regime and many on permanent contracts.
- Legal and political uncertainty has increased after the Supreme Court raised doubts about the procedure’s compatibility with EU law and may refer questions to the Court of Justice of the EU, prompting the government to accelerate admissions and fueling sharp opposition from PP and Vox.