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As Trump Terrorizes Immigrants, Spain Offers Permanent Residency for 500,000 People
Responding to the deadly US crackdown, one Spanish leftist leader said, "If they kidnap children and murder, we give papers."
Jan 27, 2026
As President Donald Trump terrorizes immigrants and Americans alike with his deadly mass deportation blitz while warning European leaders to tighten their borders by raising the racist specter of "civilizational erasure," Spain's government is moving against the xenophobic tide by offering hundreds of thousands of migrants a chance at permanent legal residency.
The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and the leftist Podemos party reached an agreement Monday following the collection of more than 700,000 petition signatures in favor of a legislative initiative to legalize up to 500,000 undocumented migrants.
Those who can prove that they were in Spain for at least five months before December 31, 2025 and have no criminal record will be eligible for permanent legal residency with permission to work.
Spanish Migration Minister Elma Saiz (PSOE) said during a press conference that "today is a historic day" for starting the process of legalizing hundreds of thousands of immigrants in a country that has made great strides in overcoming its legacy of racism and xenophobia.
The far-right Vox party called the legalization plan "madness" that promotes "barbarity."
However, Saiz said that legalization will help Spain “recognize, dignify, and give guarantees” to people who already live and work in the country.
“We’re reinforcing a migratory model based on human rights, on integration, and on coexistence that’s compatible with both economic growth and social cohesion,” she added.
Responding to arguments that legalizing so many migrants would severely strain Spain's social safety net, Podemos Secretary General Ione Belarra said on social media, "What overwhelms public services are your cuts and privatizations."
Belarra also said that some opponents of legalization are angry that they will no longer be able to exploit migrants by paying them less than legal workers.
Podemos Political Secretary Irene Montero said Tuesday that "we have a legal obligation to guarantee [migrant] rights and that is what this regularization is, which we hope will reach all the people without papers in Spain who were here before December 31, 2025."
Spain's population is approximately 49.4 million. Legalizing half a million immigrants would be the equivalent of granting permanent residency to about 3.6 million migrants in the United States. There were believed to be about 7.1 million foreign nationals living in Spain at the beginning of last year, of whom an estimated 840,000 were in the country without authorization.
Sánchez's PSOE-led government has been supportive of immigrants since coming to power in 2018, offering safe harbor for migrants arriving in Europe by sea when other European Union nations have moved to restrict their entry. More than 10,000 migrants died trying to reach Spain in 2024, according to the Spanish advocacy group Caminando Fronteras (Walking Borders).
Meanwhile, Trump's latest National Security Strategy, released last month, urges the US to "cultivate resistance" to immigration in Europe, espousing racist "great replacement" ideology while warning of “the real and stark prospect of civilizational erasure."
“Should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less," the document states.
European nations including Denmark, Germany, Greece, Poland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom have recently tightened their migration and asylum policies, in some cases partially due to pressure from Washington.
Responding to Trump's deadly anti-immigrant crackdown—which has killed both immigrants and US citizens—Montero said Tuesday that “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."
“We cannot accept that there are people who live in fear and without rights," she added. "We cannot accept racist violence. Racism is answered with rights. If they kidnap children and murder, we give papers."
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Spain Announces Arms Embargo on Israel and Other Steps 'to Stop the Genocide in Gaza'
"This is not self-defense," Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez asserted, "it is the extermination of a defenseless people and a violation of every international law."
Sep 08, 2025
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Monday announced a series of nine new measures—including a total arms embargo—aimed at pressuring the government of fugitive Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "to stop the genocide in Gaza."
Sánchez, who leads the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE), announced the steps during a speech in which he first acknowledged the historical suffering of the Jewish people, which includes the 1492 ethnic cleansing of Jews from Spain.
"The Jewish people have suffered countless persecutions, deserve to have their own state, and to feel secure," Sánchez said. "That is why the Spanish government has condemned Hamas' attacks from day one."
However, "there is a difference between defending your country and bombing hospitals or starving innocent children," the prime minister continued. "This is an unjustifiable attack on the civilian population, which the [United Nations] rapporteur has described as genocide."
"Sixty thousand dead, two million displaced, half of them children," Sánchez said. "This is not self-defense, it is not even an attack—it is the extermination of a defenseless people and a violation of every international law."
The nine measures—which must be approved by lawmakers and the Cabinet—include:
- A "legal and permanent prohibition" on the purchase and sale of weapons, ammunition, and military equipment;
- A ban on transit through Spanish ports for all ships carrying fuels destined for Israel's military;
- Denial of entry into Spanish airspace for all state aircraft carrying military equipment to Israel;
- A ban on entry to Spain for "all persons directly involved in genocide, human rights violations, and war crimes" in Gaza;
- Prohibition of imported products from illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories;
- Limitation of consular services for Spanish citizens residing in illegal Israeli settlements;
- Strengthened support for the Palestinian Authority;
- An additional €10 million in support for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA); and
- An increase in overall humanitarian spending for Gaza, to reach €150 million by 2026.
"Spain does not have nuclear bombs. We cannot stop the Israeli offensive alone, but we will not stop trying," Sánchez said, recognizing the limitations of Monday's action.
Spain's new measures come in addition to its earlier steps toward an arms embargo, promotion of several UN ceasefire resolutions, support for the International Criminal Court's (ICC) effort to bring Netanyahu to justice and the International Court of Justice's (ICJ) ongoing South Africa-led genocide case against Israel, and formal recognition of Palestinian statehood.
Individual Spanish politicians have also taken action for Palestine, including former Social Rights Minister Ione Belarra, an early proponent for ICC prosecution of Netanyahu and others; former leftist lawmaker and Palma City Councilmember Lucia Muñoz, a participant in the Global Sumud Flotilla; and former Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau, another flotilla member whose city cut ties with Israel prior to the Gaza genocide over "the crime of apartheid against the Palestinian people."
The Global Sumud Flotilla—whose other members include Mandla Mandela, Susan Sarandon, and Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg—set sail from Barcelona last month and was warmly welcomed Sunday upon a stopover in Tunis, Tunisia en route to the coast of Gaza, where activists will attempt to break an Israeli blockade and deliver desperately needed humanitarian aid.
The Israeli government responded to Sánchez's announcement with its customary allegation of antisemitism and an entry ban on Deputy Prime Minister Yolanda Díaz and Youth Minister Sira Rego.
"It is a point of pride that a genocidal state is banning me," said Díaz, a member of the Communist Party of Spain and Sumar movement.
Spain subsequently recalled its ambassador from Tel Aviv. The Spanish Foreign Ministry said the government "would not be intimidated in its defense of peace, international law, and human rights."
According to figures from the Gaza Health Ministry—which experts contend are likely a vast undercount—at least 64,522 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza since October 2023, most of them women and children. More than 163,000 others have been wounded, and thousands more are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble.
Hundreds of thousands of Gazans are starving to death in a famine largely caused by Israel's "complete siege" of the coastal exclave. At least hundreds of Palestinians have starved to death in what hunger experts and every United Nations Security Council member except the United States have called a man-made catastrophe caused by Israeli policies and practices.
The ICC warrants issued last year for Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant accuse the pair of crimes against humanity and war crimes, including forced starvation and murder.
On Monday, Spain also condemned what it called a "terrorist attack" that left six people, including Spanish citizen Yakov Pinto, dead in a mass shooting north of occupied Jerusalem.
Sánchez's announcement followed pro-Palestine and anti-genocide protests in cities including the capital Madrid, where demonstrators rallied outside the Israeli Embassy on Saturday and shouted messages including, "It's Not a War, It's a Genocide!" and "Israel Kills, Europe Sponsors!"
GENOCIDIO EN GAZA
Concentración, hoy 06/09, delante de la embajada de Israel (Madrid)...
"No es una guerra, es un genocidio"
"Israel asesina, y Europa patrocina"
"Israel bombardea con bombas europeas"
"Esta embajada está ensangrentada" pic.twitter.com/rRH4T6zS7f
— Christophe Deschamps (@ChristopheDes16) September 6, 2025
On Sunday, demonstrators gathered in Madrid's Callao Square, where participants read aloud the names of many of the more than 18,500 Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces in Gaza, followed by the word "murdered."
According to a June Pew Research Center survey, 75% of Spanish respondents have a negative view of Israel, with 46%—the highest percentage of any non-Muslim nation in the 24 nations polled—having a "very unfavorable" view of the country.
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Barcelona City Council Suspends Ties With Israel Over Gaza Slaughter
"It's not a war, it's a genocide," said Councilmember Ada Colau. "We not only need to denounce it, we must act and not stay on the sidelines."
Nov 24, 2023
The city council of Barcelona, Spain's second-largest city, voted Friday to suspend relations with Israel's far-right government over what the party behind the move called the "genocide" in Gaza.
Introduced by the leftist Barcelona en Comú party—which asserted that "no government can turn a blind eye to a genocide"—the resolution demands the municipal government discontinue "institutional relations with the current government of Israel until there is a definitive cease-fire, and respect for the basic rights of the Palestinian people and compliance with United Nations resolutions are guaranteed."
The resolution also calls for requiring public contracts to ensure that "no operator belongs to or carries out" activities "that go against international humanitarian law" and "rejects and condemns attacks against the population civilian, both Israeli and Palestinian, as well as any action constituting collective punishment, such as the forced displacement of population, the systematic destruction of homes and civilian infrastructure, or the blocking of the supply of energy, water, food, medical supplies and medicines to the population of the Gaza Strip."
Barcelona en Comú Councilmember Ada Colau said in a statement that "it's not a war, it's a genocide, and as [Spanish] President Pedro Sánchez has stated, it is unbearable, and if it is unbearable, we not only need to denounce it, we must act and not stay on the sidelines."
"Every 10 minutes, a child dies in the Gaza Strip under the bombs of one of the most powerful armies in the world," she added.
Colau, whose eight-year tenure as Barcelona's mayor ended in June, earlier this year
announced her city was cutting ties with Israel and ending its symbolic 25-year-old "twin cities" relationship with Tel Aviv due to the Israeli government's "crime of apartheid against the Palestinian people."
Barcelona's current mayor, Jaume Collboni of the Socialists' Party of Catalonia, reversed Colau's move in September.
Earlier this month, Barcelona dockworkers also showed solidarity with Palestinians by refusing to load or unload military materials onto any ship bound for Israel or any conflict zone where they could be used against civilians.
The new Barcelona resolution urges Israel and Hamas to make permanent the temporary four-day ceasefire that began Friday morning, as well as an end to Israeli violence against Palestinian civilians in the illegally occupied West Bank and the unconditional and safe release of all hostages taken by Hamas.
On Friday, Hamas freed 24 captives—13 Israeli women and children, 10 Thai nationals, and one Filipino—as part of the cease-fire agreement. Israel released 39 Palestinian women and minors from behind bars to fulfill its end of the deal. Hamas has agreed to free 50 of its hostages in exchange for the release of 150 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
Israeli forces have arrested thousands of Palestinians on what critics claim are often dubious grounds meant to give Israel leverage and bargaining chips.
According to the Gaza Health Ministry, nearly 15,000 Palestinians, including more than 4,000 women and over 6,000 children, have been
killed by Israeli bombs and bullets since the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel that left around 1,200 people dead and 240 others kidnapped. The international humanitarian group Oxfam
said Thursday that newborn babies are dying from preventable causes in Gaza's hospitals due to the Israeli siege.
More than 36,000 Palestinians have been wounded by Israeli attacks on Gaza, while around 7,000 others—including over 4,700 children—are missing and presumed dead. More than 1.7 million Gazans have been forcibly displaced and around half the homes in the besieged strip have been damaged or destroyed, according to United Nations agencies.
At least 255 Palestinians have also been killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
In addition to the Barcelona councilmembers who voted Friday for the resolution, other Spanish officials have also called for cutting ties with Israel's government over its Gaza onslaught.
Last month, outgoing Social Rights Minister Ione Belarra, who also leads the leftist Podemos party, urged her country's coalition government to petition the International Criminal Court to open a war crimes investigation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for Israel's indiscriminate bombardment of Gaza and for cutting off food, fuel, and electricity from the besieged strip's 2.3 million residents.
On Thursday, Belarra criticized Sánchez—a member of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party—for visiting Israel this week, arguing that his trip "only serves to whitewash Netanyahu and to equate the state of Israel, an occupying power that perpetrates a genocide, with the victims of the Palestinian people."
"Such inaction," she added, "is absolutely unbearable."
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'The Rain of Bombs Is Inhumane': Belgian Deputy PM Calls For Sanctions on Israel
"While war crimes are being committed in Gaza, Israel is ignoring international demands for a cease-fire," said Petra De Sutter.
Nov 08, 2023
As most Western leaders stand staunchly with Israel as it wages what many experts have described as a genocidal war on Gaza, a top Cabinet member of a NATO nation on Wednesday implored her government to sanction Israel and call for the International Criminal Court to investigate war crimes committed by Israeli forces and Hamas.
"It's time for sanctions against Israel," Belgian Deputy Prime Minister Petra De Sutter, a member of the center-left Groen (Green) party, said on social media.
"The rain of bombs is inhumane," she continued. "While war crimes are being committed in Gaza, Israel is ignoring international demands for a cease-fire."
"I am calling on the federal government to sanction Israel," De Sutter declared. "How? The International Criminal Court must be able to expand and strengthen the ongoing investigation into war crimes. There must be an investigation into the bombing of hospitals and refugee camps."
"This is war violence that is never, ever acceptable," she stressed. "Belgium must not support this violation of international law."
"There must be an import ban on products in our supermarkets that come from illegal settlements," De Sutter argued. "In addition, Israel's Association Agreement with Europe must be immediately suspended. There can be no business as usual."
"I also continue to reiterate that Hamas must release the hostages. And we must dry up the flow of money to this terrorist organization."
"Human rights are for everyone. The Palestinians are in a state of total hopelessness," she said. "That is why a political solution is required in which Palestine is recognized as a state and the initial pre-1967 borders are respected."
"I also continue to reiterate that Hamas must release the hostages," De Sutter added, referring to around 240 people kidnapped from Israel. "And we must dry up the flow of money to this terrorist organization."
On Wednesday, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said that "the collective punishment by Israel of Palestinian civilians amounts... to a war crime, as does the unlawful forcible evacuation of civilians."
While eight nations—Bahrain, Chad, Chile, Colombia, Honduras, Jordan, South Africa, and Turkey—have recalled their ambassadors from Israel and Bolivia has completely severed diplomatic ties, no European country has taken such steps, and very few European leaders have gone as far as De Sutter in calling for punitive measures.
Last month, Spanish Social Rights Minister Ione Belarra, who also leads the leftist Podemos party, urged her country's coalition government to petition the International Criminal Court to open a war crimes investigation into Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for Israel's indiscriminate bombardment of Gaza and for cutting off food, fuel, and electricity from the besieged strip's 2.3 million residents.
"The Israeli state must end this planned genocide against the Palestine people," Belarra told Al Jazeera on Wednesday.
"Why can we give lessons in human rights in other conflicts and not here when the world is watching in horror?" she asked, lamenting the "deaths of thousands of children [and] the mothers desperately shouting because they are witnessing the killing of their children."
Belarra also said Hamas must be held accountable for leading attacks in southern Israel that left more than 1,400 people, most of them civilians, dead.
The Gaza Health Ministry
said Wednesday that since October 7, Israeli forces have killed at least 10,569 Palestinians—including more than 2,800 women and over 4,300 children—while wounding upward of 26,400 others and forcibly displacing a staggering 70% of Gaza's population.
"There is a deafening silence of so many countries and so many political leaders who could do something," said Belarra. "It seems the display of hypocrisy, which the European Commission is showing, is unacceptable."
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Spanish Minister Says Netanyahu Should Be Brought Before ICC for War Crimes
"Using the horrific murders of Israeli civilians by Palestinian armed factions as an excuse to justify Israel's crimes in general and the massacre in Gaza in particular is unacceptable," said Spain's minister of social rights.
Oct 16, 2023
Spain's minister of social rights released a statement Monday calling on her country's coalition government to petition the International Criminal Court to open a war crimes investigation into Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, citing the ongoing aerial bombardment of the Gaza Strip and the devastating blockade that has prevented the free flow of desperately needed humanitarian aid.
"Using the horrific murders of Israeli civilians by Palestinian armed factions as an excuse to justify Israel's crimes in general and the massacre in Gaza in particular is unacceptable," Ione Belarra, the leader of Spain's left-wing Podemos party, said in a video statement posted to social media.
"We ask our partner, the Socialist Party, to work together to present on behalf of the government of Spain a petition to the prosecutor's office of the International Criminal Court to investigate the war crimes committed in Palestine by Netanyahu, as was done recently in the case of the Spanish aid worker murdered in the Ukrainian war, as well as those perpetrated by Hamas in Israel and occupied territories against the civilian population," said Belarra, who also called for immediate efforts to protect civilians and negotiate an end to the violence.
Israel is not a member state of the ICC, but the top prosecutor for the Netherlands-based court told Reuters last week that war crimes carried out by Hamas and the Israeli government fall under the body's jurisdiction.
"It's horrendous what's going on, what we're seeing on our television screens. There has to be a legal process to determine criminal responsibility," said Karim Khan. "Willful killing, hostage-taking are grave breaches of the Geneva Convention and one has to comply with the law."
In the wake of Hamas' deadly October 7 attack on Israel, the Netanyahu government began what international human rights groups and legal experts have described as a campaign of collective punishment, bombarding the densely populated Gaza Strip, devastating civilian infrastructure, and cutting off the enclave's supply of food, electricity, fuel, and other critical supplies.
Israeli officials have
admitted that the assault on Gaza is primarily geared toward inflicting massive damage, not on precisely targeting Hamas.
More than 2,600 people in Gaza have been killed since Israel's bombing campaign began and more than a million have been displaced. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)
warned Sunday that the Israeli airstrikes and blockade have sparked "an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe" as Gaza's healthcare system nears total collapse.
On Friday, the Israeli government ordered the entire population of northern Gaza—more than a million people—to evacuate ahead of an expected ground invasion, a demand that prompted global outrage. Rights groups said the directive could amount to the war crime of forcible transfer, given that Gazans have been given no guarantee of safe passage or clear assurance that they will be able to return to their homes.
Israeli bombing on Monday
reportedly dashed hopes of a temporary agreement to allow people to flee Gaza and let humanitarian aid enter through a border crossing between Egypt and the occupied territory.
In her remarks on Monday, Belarra decried the complicity of European governments and the United States—Israel's primary supplier of weaponry—in the devastating attack on Gaza and urged the E.U. to "stop blindly following" the U.S.
"The United States and the European Union are not looking the other way or acting in a neutral manner, they are encouraging the state of Israel in its policy of apartheid and occupation that seriously violates human rights," said Belarra. "Using Hamas as an excuse to murder thousands of Palestinian civilians, including children, is unspeakable hypocrisy on the part of both Israel and the countries that justify it."
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