FILE - Migrants sit together with their belongings after being evicted by police from an abandoned school where they had been living in Badalona, near Barcelona, Spain, Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti, File)

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Spain's government announced Tuesday it will grant legal status to potentially hundreds of thousands of immigrants living and working in the country without authorization, the latest example of how the country has bucked a trend toward increasingly harsh immigration policies seen in the United States and much of Europe.

Spain's Minister of Migration, Elma Saiz, announced the extraordinary measure following the weekly cabinet meeting. She said her government will amend existing immigration laws by expedited decree to grant immigrants who are living in Spain without authorization legal residency of up to one year as well as permission to work.

The permits will apply to those who arrived in Spain before Dec. 31, 2025, and who can prove they have lived in Spain for at least five months. They must also prove they have no criminal record.

In contrast to other nations that have moved to restrict immigration and asylum, many emboldened by the Trump administration's policies, Spain has taken the opposite direction with Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and his ministers often extolling the benefits of immigration to the economy.

Spain “will not look the other way,” Saiz told journalists during a press conference. The government is “dignifying and recognizing people who are already in our country," she said.

The measure could benefit an estimated 500,000 people living in Spain without authorization, Saiz said. Other studies have put the estimate of people living in the shadows of Spanish society at up to 800,000. Many are Latin American or African immigrants working in the agricultural, tourism or service sectors, backbones of Spain's booming economy.

The expedited decree bypasses a similar bill that has stalled in parliament. Saiz said she expects those eligible will be able to start applying for their legal status from April until the end of June.

The Spanish government's move came as a surprise to many after a last-minute deal between the ruling Socialist Party and the left-wing Podemos party in exchange for parliamentary support to Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez wobbly government.

Irene Montero, a European Parliament lawmaker with Podemos, which first announced the deal Monday, said the crackdown against immigrants in the United States was unacceptable.

“In the United States at the moment there are millions of people who are afraid in their own homes because Trump’s migration policy enters people’s homes and takes them away,” she said. “If they kidnap children, murder and terrorize people, we give them papers."

The news was celebrated by hundreds of migrant rights groups and prominent Catholic associations who had campaigned and obtained 700,000 signatures for a similar initiative that was admitted for debate in Congress in 2024 but was unlikely to get enough votes to pass.

“We are not used to these victories,” said Silvana Cabrera, a spokesperson for the migrant campaigning group RegularizaciónYa, or RegularizationNow in English.

In a statement, the Spanish Episcopal Conference called the move an “act of social justice and recognition of so many migrants who, through their work, have long contributed to the development of" Spain.

Saiz said she expected a high volume of applications, and that resources would be in place to process them smoothly and efficiently.

Center-right and far-right parties criticized the government's announcement.

Alberto Núñez Feijóo, leader of the conservative Popular Party, accused Sánchez on social media of trying to distract from a deadly train crash earlier this month that left 46 dead. Meanwhile, Santiago Abascal, leader of the anti-immigration, far-right party Vox, said Sánchez “hated” Spaniards and was “accelerating an invasion,” echoing a racist conspiracy theory often used by right-wing extremists.

The Iberian nation — which saw millions of its citizens leave during and after its civil war — has taken in millions of people from South America and Africa in recent years. The vast majority entered the country legally.

Saiz said Spain will remain a “beacon” in the fight against the global wave of anti-immigration politics led by the far right.

“We will do everything in our power to stop it,” she said. "I believe that today is a great day for our country.”

___

Follow AP’s global migration coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/migration

News from © The Associated Press, 2026