Catalonia migrant regularization surge overwhelms authorities

More than 1.3 million migrants have applied to regularize their status in Catalonia, far exceeding the administration’s original forecasts. The extraordinary regularisation programme, which ends on 30 June 2026, was intended as a controlled administrative process but has become a massive influx of requests.

Applicants face a major obstacle in obtaining the required criminal‑record certificates from their countries of origin. Consulates handling these documents are saturated, and foreign administrations often take weeks to respond, creating a bottleneck that threatens the programme’s deadline.

The surge reflects a widespread demand among migrants to move from informal work into legal stability, but the bureaucratic bottleneck risks delaying or denying many of the applications before the closing date.