For a generation, workers from across Latin America and Africa have come to Spain’s Mediterranean coast to pick artichokes and lemons from tree farms that stretch inland across hills. Trucks carrying freshly harvested oranges pass fields of pink-flowered almond trees.
This reality has helped turn this state into one of the agricultural powers of Spain. It has also positioned the country as an outlier in the heated immigration debate in the West.
Spain, once a country of emigration before joining the European Union in 1986, has seen immigration skyrocket over the past 40 years. As in other parts of the continent, this has caused tension. The far right, which only existed at the electoral extremes a decade ago, now has a party that is projected to win 20% of the vote in the next general election in 2027, in part due to a brewing anti-immigrant sentiment that is familiar throughout the West.
Why do we write this?
The United States and Europe have responded to a wave of migration with stricter border policies and efforts to expel migrants. Spain is taking a different approach: granting immigrants legal residency.
But Spain is different from the rest of Europe and the United States, which have promoted stricter border policies. In January, the country announced that immigrants already living here could apply for legal residency, representing the largest regularization process in Spain in more than two decades.
Immigration advocates hail the measure as a victory for immigrants and human rights. But for many in Spain, it is simply the practical way to go: Spain’s economy has grown twice as fast as its European neighbors, and the government believes that immigrants, who work in all sectors from agriculture to construction and services, are vital to continuing that trend. Here in Alicante, the center of this state’s agricultural industry, resides the highest per capita number of foreign-born nationals in Spain.
“Without immigrants, Spain would not eat,” says José Vicente Andreu, a lemon producer in the Alicante area and president of the Asaja Alicante farmers association.
A necessary population
The fact that Spain’s agricultural industry is booming is thanks in part to men like Omar, who stands outside the Algerian consulate on a recent morning, waiting for it to open and hoping to be the first in line to get his paperwork in order.
Omar’s European dream has not been what he imagined. You have ongoing and persistent health care needs. The money he earns doing odd jobs is barely enough to pay the rent.
“I want to stay in Europe,” says Omar, who arrived here three years ago, blinking back to sleep. Because he lives illegally in Spain, he, like other unauthorized immigrants interviewed, asked to use only his first name. “But without papers I can’t work. And without work I have no future.”
And many farmers here, like Andreu, argue that the Spanish agricultural sector has little future without it. This is true in all Spanish sectors.
A June report by the Elcano Royal Institute think tank found that in the last quarter of 2024, 31% of agricultural workers were immigrants from countries with lower per capita income than Spain. Andreu puts that figure much higher and says that up to 90% of fruit and vegetable pickers in Spain are immigrants.
Foreigners also keep other Spanish industries alive. According to the same report, immigrants from comparatively low-income countries represent 71% of domestic workers, 45% of hospitality staff and 32% of construction workers.
“Who works in our factories, collecting our garbage? They are the immigrants,” says Andreu. “The Spanish don’t want to do this job.”
About 62% of the country’s farmers will retire by 2030, according to government figures, and labor organizations say 10% of hospitality industry jobs remain unfilled in certain regions of the country. Those numbers are expected to worsen as Spain records its lowest birth rate in two decades.
People like Ali say they want to help. When Ali arrived last year from a small fishing village in Senegal, he thought he might find work picking fruit or painting houses. But without a residence permit you cannot work legally. Instead, he spends his days selling cheap Chinese sunglasses to tourists on Alicante’s seafront, disappearing from sight as police cars pass by.
“I would do anything else: farming, construction,” Ali says, lowering his baseball cap to protect his eyes from the midday sun. “This is not a life.”
High demand, high costs
In a way, Ali’s situation is because something here is already working. Immigrants say it is more difficult to find illegal and clandestine work in Spain. Employers who hire people without documentation risk fines of up to 10,000 euros (about $11,800) per worker, and the country’s labor inspectors have the right to make unannounced business visits.
However, such controls have not reduced the number of immigrants testing their opportunities here. Every year, some 90,000 people enter Spain illegally, by boat or plane, and approximately 840,000 people live here without legal status, according to the economic studies center Funcas. Almost 90% of unauthorized immigrants in Spain are believed to come from Latin America.
The large number of arrivals, combined with stricter controls, has meant that people without documentation can end up in precarious work environments. Human rights groups have warned of “modern slavery,” especially in certain sectors such as domestic work, agriculture and waste management, where illegal workers outnumber legal ones.
Last November, 19 people were arrested for employing undocumented workers for 50 euros ($59) a day on a farm in Villena, about 20 miles from Alicante, in squalid conditions. Research has found that undocumented women doing domestic work are more likely to report sexual and gender-based violence at work.
Daily life is also a constant challenge. Without a residence permit, it is almost impossible to open a bank account, sign a lease for an apartment, or have the right to receive medical care and a pension through the social security system.
“These people are already living here, but their well-being and integration are being affected,” says Andrés Góngora, an executive member of the Union of Agricultural and Livestock Organizations (COAG), a Spanish farmers organization. The residency law “can only be a good thing.”
Provide a normal life
The new law is just the first step in easing the daily struggles of undocumented people, advocates say.
“Those of us who work for immigrant rights are very proud of our country right now,” says Pedro de Santiago Ortega, spokesperson for Accem, a nonprofit human rights organization in Madrid. “Spain is doing the opposite of the rest of the world. Immigrants who have struggled for years can finally have a normal daily life.”
Domingo Gómez Torres, a lawyer and consul at the Honorary Consulate of Ecuador in Alicante, says he hopes the law will be amended in April, but anyone who can prove they have lived in Spain for at least five months before December 31, 2025, and who has no criminal record, can apply for legal residency. Those accepted will be entitled to a one-year residence permit, which will allow them to work.
While the latest law to grant legal work status to immigrants is positive, observers say, in practice it provides only a one-time release from migration pressures in Spain. It does not address the underlying problems; Spain still needs to improve its immigration regulations and entry requirements, like the rest of Europe, they say.
Since 1981, the European Union has introduced more than 20 regularization programs like Spain’s to provide legal pathways to immigrants already living on the continent. But EU countries have struggled to control their borders and return only about 20% of people who overstay their visas.
“If irregular entry cannot be prevented and people cannot be returned, there will be irregular migrants,” says Jasmijn Slootjes, deputy director of the European Migration Policy Institute.
Safety and Security Concerns
The new law – and immigrants’ response to it – has worried some. Spain’s far-right party Vox has used the announcement of the regularization measure to warn voters about a potential “pull factor” that could cause a continued influx of migrants and insecurity.
Since the announcement, foreign consulates across the country have been inundated with people seeking to obtain police clearance certificates to complete their applications. Near the Algerian consulate in Alicante, people like Omar sleep on the stairs and sidewalks in front of local shops to queue early. Others say that they came from France or Belgium to try it here, since they obtained their European entry fingerprints in Spain.
While Madrid and Barcelona have the largest absolute number of immigrants, in smaller cities the changes that immigrants bring to once homogeneous communities can be disconcerting to locals. María José, owner of a jewelry store in Alicante, has started asking her adult son to take her to work and is too afraid to go out during the day “not even to buy bread,” she says.
“I’m worried about my personal safety,” says María José, who asked to use her name only for fear of a violent reaction, “but also about the safety of this country.”
She and local businessmen have launched a petition calling for a greater police presence around the Algerian consulate and an end to the regularization measure. As of mid-February, the petition had almost 50 signatures, including those of several Vox members.
“We don’t want Spain to become part of France,” says a member of the Vox group who visits the jewelry store. Otherwise, “we are going to have ‘red zones’ where you won’t even be able to enter.”
The “different path” of Spain
Recent surveys find that 42% of Spaniards think legal migration is positive for the country, compared to 22% in France and 24% in Germany. In early February, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez wrote a guest essay in The New York Times to present his country’s “different way” on immigration.
“I think that what Spain is doing, by granting the mass regularization of immigrants, has enormous symbolic value,” says Javier Gallego, radio journalist and prominent voice of the left in Spain. “It shows that we are a country that defends the values of democracy.”
For those who have already gone through the process, there is a sense of relief: others will not have to go through what they went through. When Lina Vargas arrived from Ecuador 26 years ago, she was unemployed for a year and lived with her in-laws until she found clandestine work at a local church.
She now has Spanish nationality and runs a recycling business with her husband, selling aluminum and wiring to the scrapyard in Alicante. Life isn’t easy, but it’s ultimately on your own terms.
“It has been a long and difficult road,” says Ms. Vargas, as she loads pieces of wood into a white van. “For other people, at least, it doesn’t have to be that way.”
