The Local Spain reports that staff representatives at Spain’s immigration offices have issued an unprecedented joint statement calling the forthcoming mass regularisation “humanly impossible” without fresh resources. The application window, set to open in early April, will allow undocumented migrants who can prove continuous residence before 31 December 2025 to regularise their status and obtain a combined work-and-residence permit.
Front-line workers say they processed 1.2 million residence procedures in 2025—already a record—yet the new initiative could double that workload in a single quarter. “We are talking about case files three to four centimetres thick that each require verification of tax, criminal-record and empadronamiento documents,” one official in Valencia told the newspaper. The unions are asking for 1,500 additional caseworkers, IT upgrades to digitise paper files, and overtime budgets to keep counters open on Saturdays.
For companies and individual travellers trying to stay ahead of the impending bottlenecks, VisaHQ’s Spain portal (https://www.visahq.com/spain/) offers real-time visa guidance, document-preparation checklists, and submission tracking to help ensure applications are complete before they reach overworked extranjería desks, reducing the risk of costly delays.
![‘Humanly Impossible’: Immigration Staff Demand Resources for Spain’s 500,000-Person Regularisation Drive]()
Why it matters for business travellers and international HR teams: protracted queues at extranjería windows have knock-on effects on all foreign-national paperwork. Even fast-track categories such as EU ICT permits and highly qualified professional visas go through the same biometric-card production pipeline. Any clog could extend normal 30-day card issuance to 60-90 days, complicating project timelines and payroll start dates.
The Ministry of Inclusion has promised a Royal Decree enabling temporary hiring and remote processing, but officials caution that recruiting and training new staff takes months. Relocation providers are therefore advising multinational clients to submit renewal dossiers at least 90 days before expiry and to keep digital copies of stamped application receipts (*resguardos*) to mitigate travel interruptions.
Long-term significance: Spain’s decision to regularise half a million people is seen as a test case for other EU countries struggling with irregular migration. Successful execution could strengthen Spain’s pitch as a business-friendly, talent-hungry destination; failure could tarnish its reputation for administrative reliability.
Front-line workers say they processed 1.2 million residence procedures in 2025—already a record—yet the new initiative could double that workload in a single quarter. “We are talking about case files three to four centimetres thick that each require verification of tax, criminal-record and empadronamiento documents,” one official in Valencia told the newspaper. The unions are asking for 1,500 additional caseworkers, IT upgrades to digitise paper files, and overtime budgets to keep counters open on Saturdays.
For companies and individual travellers trying to stay ahead of the impending bottlenecks, VisaHQ’s Spain portal (https://www.visahq.com/spain/) offers real-time visa guidance, document-preparation checklists, and submission tracking to help ensure applications are complete before they reach overworked extranjería desks, reducing the risk of costly delays.
Why it matters for business travellers and international HR teams: protracted queues at extranjería windows have knock-on effects on all foreign-national paperwork. Even fast-track categories such as EU ICT permits and highly qualified professional visas go through the same biometric-card production pipeline. Any clog could extend normal 30-day card issuance to 60-90 days, complicating project timelines and payroll start dates.
The Ministry of Inclusion has promised a Royal Decree enabling temporary hiring and remote processing, but officials caution that recruiting and training new staff takes months. Relocation providers are therefore advising multinational clients to submit renewal dossiers at least 90 days before expiry and to keep digital copies of stamped application receipts (*resguardos*) to mitigate travel interruptions.
Long-term significance: Spain’s decision to regularise half a million people is seen as a test case for other EU countries struggling with irregular migration. Successful execution could strengthen Spain’s pitch as a business-friendly, talent-hungry destination; failure could tarnish its reputation for administrative reliability.
