[CLC-CVX in Spain Migration Team]

“Come, you who are blessed by my Father. For I was a stranger and you welcomed me”

At the end of last January, those of us who are part of CLC-CVX in Spain, and many more people of good will in our country, received news that filled us with joy and gave hope to a multitude of immigrant sisters and brothers who live with us. On the 26th, the political party Podemos (We Can) announced an agreement with the government of the nation for an Extraordinary Regularization of Immigrants who are in an irregular administrative situation and had arrived in the country before December 31, 2025. On January 27, the government ratified that agreement and communicated the beginning of the legal procedures so that this regularization could take place between the months of April and June 2026. The measure is estimated to benefit between 500,000 and 700,000 people.

So many times, when we contemplate the world around us, full of poverty, suffering, violence, wars and injustices, we can fall into the temptation to do nothing to improve it. We may think that we, small people, cannot do anything against the great economic and political powers and interests that move the planet. However, this Extraordinary Regularization has been a great victory achieved by small people. It is the proof that the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano was right when he said that “Many small people, in small places, doing small things, can change the world”. We, who want to build the Kingdom of God with our Lord, should take this into account: we are not alone, the Lord is with us.

It was 2019 when everything started. A small political party began to talk about asking the government for an Extraordinary Regularization to improve the living conditions of so many immigrants who had already lived in Spain for a long time and had not achieved the regular administrative status that would allow them to work and live with dignity. A good number of sisters and brothers of CLC-CVX in Spain are members of the Partido Por un Mundo Más Justo (Party For A Fairer World), which still has no representation in our national parliament. In April 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, given the situation of serious vulnerability of the immigrant population during the lock-down, this regularization was demanded by letter to the government and they rejected the proposal.

In July 2021, the first meetings between human rights organizations took place in order to present the Iniciativa Legislativa Popular (ILP) Regularización Ya (Popular Legislative Initiative Regularization Now). Under section 87.3 of the Constitution of Spain, Spanish citizens can introduce a Bill in parliament when they have collected 500,000 certified signatures supporting it. The collection of the 500,000 necessary signatures began in February 2022 and by then other political parties, labor unions, entities and civil organizations, as well as bodies and organizations inside the Catholic Church —such as Caritas, religious congregations and CLC-CVX in Spain— had already joined the campaign that was named ESencialES (Essentials).

It was a great satisfaction for our community to contribute to the collection of signatures in all the cities in which we are present, to explain the initiative to our own families, to our friends, to our workmates. We received with joy the support and also, with patience, the negative answers that, sometimes, were accompanied by the xenophobic speeches that the extreme right wing parties have managed to successfully sow in our country. As members of CLC-CVX in Spain we were very proud of our community’s involvement, as part of the civil society and as part of the Catholic Church, in the defense of the rights of vulnerable people. The initiative had by then gathered about 900 entities and organizations. Everyone of them thought, as it was expressed in one of the campaign documents, that the Regularization was not charity, it was social justice and a decision of courage and political will.

In December 2022, the campaign ended with the delivery of about 700,000 signatures to the authorities, who validated 611,821 signatures, 22% more than those necessary. CLC-CVX in Spain occupied the twenty-fourth position on the list of bodies that had gathered valid signatures: 3032. The Party For a Fairer World publicly thanked CLC-CVX in Spain for its involvement in the campaign. The Popular Legislative Initiative legal process had begun, but then the Prime Minister fixed the general elections for July 2023 and everything was suspended. We were then plunged into a great uncertainty.

From that date, the campaign focused on mobilizing and informing citizens through the social networks, meetings and thematic round tables, and also on involving some media to spread that the regularization was absolutely necessary. The Spanish Conference of Bishops was also involved in this dissemination work and they even pressured the traditional right wing parties to support the initiative, which was taken into consideration in a parliament session on April 9, 2024 with the only 33 negative votes of the extreme right party.

And after that, the authorities’ silence disappointed us. It seemed that four years of work had been useless and that the situation of our immigrant neighbors would not improve. In addition, the traditional right wing parties changed their position and decided to talk and act against the regularization, perhaps for they feared then and fear now the growth of the extreme right wing, which constantly uses the anti-immigration discourse to gather more voters. At that time, at CLC-CVX in Spain we decided to do something about the regularization and, between September 2024 and June 2025, we published on our website and on our social networks a series of ten reports under the title “9 months, 9 fake news” in which we dismantled one by one the lies against the immigrants that are most repeated in our country. We provided data and collected the testimonies of recognized professionals who are members of our community. Our series of reports (you can find them all through this link) had an unexpected diffusion and impact and we received thanks even from the Cabinet of the Presidency of the Spanish Government. None of us has the slightest idea of how our reports reached the government.

We want to finish as we started, talking about the most important thing: more than 500,000 people will be regularized and recognized as human beings with dignity and social and labor rights. They will contribute with their work to the economic growth of our country and with their presence they will make our society richer, more diverse and inclusive. We are already experiencing this in our CLC-CVX in Spain, in which the arrival of immigrant sisters and brothers to our community fills us with joy and enriches us every day. Since January 2026, there has been an atmosphere of optimism and joy in our cities, our neighborhoods and our community.

We want to build a more cohesive and fairer society, in which we can live in harmony. We want immigrant sisters and brothers to have an opportunity to live in peace and thrive with decent jobs in conditions of equality and dignity. We want to look directly into each other’s eyes and understand that between two human beings, wherever we come from, there are always more things that unite us than those that can separate us. We want to remember the verbs with which Pope Francis encouraged us to respond to the reality of migrations: “Welcome, protect, promote and integrate”.

We will continue informing you about the regularization. Receive our fraternal embrace.