This European country is being torn apart by its migrant amnesty

The scheme, which runs until the end of June, offers undocumented migrants in the country a one-year legal resident permit.

However, the scheme has already proven divisive. When the chaotic embassy scenes occurred last week, police had to be called to restore order. There were no arrests.

The incident at the Gambian embassy prompted renewed criticism of the Spanish government’s migration amnesty. It also highlighted the huge pressures on officials dealing with an enormous number of cases in a short period of time.

No, no es #África: es la embajada de #Gambia en #Madrid.

Todo ello como consecuencia del proceso de regularización de personas extranjeras en situación irregular impulsado por el Gobierno, que está generando un auténtico caos en buena parte del país, algo totalmente previsible,… pic.twitter.com/Bi05pmJ7io

— JUPOL (@JupolNacional) April 28, 2026

Jusapol, a police union, said in a post on social media: “No, this is not Africa, it’s the embassy of The Gambia in Madrid. All of this is because of the regularisation process for foreigners in an irregular situation promoted by the government which is generating real chaos in much of the country, something that was entirely foreseeable.”

Miguel Ángel García Martín, a spokesman for the presidency and justice ministry in the right-wing Madrid regional government, said the attempted incursion into the embassy sent a worrying image to the outside world.

“Of course, we are concerned because we are giving an image of a country that is in complete chaos, a regularisation process that was flawed from the start and that we are seeing is overwhelming the services of many municipalities and seeing worrying images like yesterday’s,” he told reporters last week.

The scheme is expected to grant at least 500,000 migrants legal status, although police have predicted that more than one million could take advantage of it.

A poll by Spanish research institute Gabinete de Estudios Sociales y Opinión Pública, published in El Periodico newspaper last month, found that 52 per cent of Spaniards supported the scheme while 48 per cent were against it.

Sandra, who did not want to give her name, lives in the capital near the embassy of The Gambia and witnessed migrants clambering over the wall.

“There had been people queuing around the block, hundreds of them all night and into Tuesday morning. Then they suddenly started to climb over the wall. It was chaos,” she said.

Nicole Ndongala, president of the Karibu Association, which represents migrants from Africa in Spain, said she understood migrants’ frustration.

“What is happening is that these embassies of African countries are not giving appointments quickly enough and then on top of that the people have to get their papers translated into Spanish which takes more time,” she said.

The Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, defended the scheme in a video posted in February where he said Spain was choosing a path of “dignity, community and justice”.

“Some say we have gone too far, that we are going against the current. But I would like to ask you, when did recognising rights become something radical? When did empathy become something exceptional?” he said.

A report published by the think-tank Funcas in January estimated that the number of migrants without legal status in Spain had risen from 107,000 in 2017 to 840,000 last year. The largest proportion of these were from Latin America.

Between 1986 and 2005, more than one million people were regularised in six separate schemes in Spain.

Kate Hooper, a senior analyst with the Migration Policy Institute, a US think-tank, said Britain and other Northern European countries had been sceptical about mass amnesties, believing that they were a “pull factor” that would bring more migrants.

“We know that it provides legal status, gives greater earning potential and lots of other benefits but if you are not addressing why people fall into this irregular status in the first place then that is a key part of the process that is missing,” she said.

“There was a backlash in Northern Europe against these schemes which were mainly adopted in Southern Europe in that there was a concern that it would result in a pull factor. I doubt that the UK would consider this kind of programme.”

Madeleine Sumption, director of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, said mass migrant amnesties like the Spanish scheme might work for migrants who were already in a country but did not solve underlying drivers of illegal immigration.

She said there were not many studies that found evidence that mass amnesties resulted in pull factors which attracted more migrants. “I struggle to imagine a one-off blanket amnesty (in the UK),” she added.