With Amnesty Passed, Is This the End of Spain?

The news out of Spain keeps getting worse — at least for those of us who care that the country's future is at stake.

This month, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s wife, Begoña Gómez, was formally charged with corruption — specifically, "embezzlement, influence peddling, corruption in business dealings and misappropriation of funds" — lending more credence to right-wing Vox party leader Santiago Abascal’s consistent refrain that Spain is being led by “a corrupt mafia trying to cling to power and avoid prison.” Meanwhile, the boss of the family, Pedro Sánchez, whose antipathy to the United States and Israel knows no limits, this week traveled to Beijing to strengthen ties with the Chinese Communist Party, his true ally. It’s no surprise that Chinese President Xi Jinping welcomed the visit and wants Sánchez to be a key interlocutor between Beijing and the EU. And perhaps the worst news came on Tuesday, when Spain’s Council of Ministers approved a royal decree that will grant legal status to 500,000 illegal migrants.

The first thing to know is that the number who will seek legal status is probably much higher than half a million, according to the National Centre for Immigration and Borders (CNIF) in conjunction with the General Immigration and Borders Commissariat of the National Police. The El Confidencial news site obtained a leaked CNIF report that claimed between one million and 1.35 million illegal migrants will benefit from the regularization process. The Olive Press reports that "the CNIF study says that between 750,000 and one million undocumented immigrants living in Spain will apply for regularization, with the vast majority gaining approval due to 'very lenient' requirements. Between 250,000 and 350,000 asylum seekers will also apply, according to the CNIF."

But Spaniards need not worry. The Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, which Sánchez set up in 2020, says mass amnesty will stop “those who exploit people.” Sánchez even published an open letter on Tuesday, hammering home to the benighted people who oppose his plan all the benefits of inclusion:

Today we face two paths. One taken by those who wish to sow fear, pit people against people and condemn thousands to exclusion. The other taken by those of us who understand that migration is a reality that must be managed responsibly, integrated fairly and transformed into shared prosperity. Spain has always chosen the second path. We have done so before. And we are doing so again today.

The truth is that there are many reasons why the Spanish people would be justified in feeling fear, especially about being one of the victims of the migrant crime wave that I've documented in previous articles. Maybe one reason is that they don’t want to be beheaded with an axe. As our own Robert Spencer reported, a Moroccan immigrant to Spain tried to kill people with an axe in the Granadan city of Montefrío on Monday. Robert noted that although the attacker felt the “call of Allah,” investigators are of course looking into whether he was "suffering from some form of disorder at the time.”

Continuing with that theme, or as Robert puts it, "this ridiculous charade," just this week the Appeals Chamber of the Spanish National Court acquitted a Moroccan national, Yassine Kanjaa, of the murder charge in the killing of a priest in an Algeciras church. Why? Because of his "diagnosis of a severe mental disorder."

The details of the amnesty plan reveal that the safety of Spain’s citizens was never a priority for the Sánchez government. The European Conservative reports:

The plan has also raised concerns within Spain’s Council of State and the Interior Ministry. The Council of State, the country’s top advisory body, issued a strongly critical opinion—particularly over how criminal background checks would be handled.
An earlier draft would have allowed applications to proceed even if individuals could not provide official proof of a clean criminal record from their country of origin, in some cases relying on a signed declaration. The Council rejected this approach and called for stricter verification.
Spain’s Interior Ministry also opposed the proposal, arguing that applications should be paused until authorities can confirm both identity and criminal history.

With that background in mind, Restore Britain MP Rupert Lowe’s comment that Tuesday’s passage of the plan is “treason” seems more than justified. Abascal, who liked Lowe’s post on X, said that the Spanish people have not given their permission for this mass amnesty and “will not forgive it.”

One reason they are not likely to forgive it is that the rest of Europe seems to be moving in the opposite direction, as the European Conservative notes:

Germany has reintroduced internal border checks and hardened its asylum system. Italy has restricted humanitarian protections and expanded migrant detention capacity. France is weighing new limits on regularizations alongside faster deportations.

Is it too late for Spain after today’s news? Perhaps not. In an article for The American Spectator titled “Will Spain’s migrant amnesty backfire?” Jim Lawley writes that support for Vox and Abascal, who once called for the deportation of 8 million immigrants, is increasing in Spain:

Support for Vox has increased in recent regional elections. In Aragon in February for example just after the plan to regularise undocumented immigrants was announced, Vox doubled its 2023 vote. Aragon is regarded as a key indicator of national sentiment.
A general election is due by August 2027. The likely result is that the Partido Popular will win the most seats but will nevertheless need the support of Vox to form a government. All the signs suggest that Vox will drive a hard bargain and there have even been rumours that Abascal will want to be minister of the interior with responsibility for immigration. If so then there could be, to put it mildly, a radical change in direction.

We can only hope.

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