Migrants with criminal records may still be eligible for residence permits in Spain if they have a Spanish national relative, the nation’s Supreme Court determined on Monday.
The ruling was issued as part of a broader legal challenge presented by several social organizations against the new Immigration Regulations implemented by the Spanish government in May 2025.
Among its contents, the text contained provisions that automatically barred migrants with criminal records from renewing residence permits in Spain. Per the newspaper ABC, the criminal records provisions factored not just the time that the migrant had lived in Spain — but also any country in which the migrant had lived in the five years prior to moving to Spain.
Although the Spanish top court reportedly upheld the majority of the regulations intact, Monday’s ruling eliminated the automatic residence permit disqualification for migrants with criminal records while introducing modifications to others.
The Spanish outlet El Debate reports that the ruling, issued by the Supreme Court’s Contentious-Administrative Chamber, determined that residence permit applications filed by migrants with criminal records must not be automatically rejected — instead, every case must be examined on a individual basis “when specially protected family rights or situations linked to European citizenship are at stake.”
The court reportedly argued that the existence of a criminal record is not, in itself, sufficient to justify a denial. As such, factors such as the “severity of the offenses| committed, the time elapsed since the events, the applicant’s conduct, family situation, and “the best interests of any minor children” must be evaluated when assessing the application.
According to El Debate, the court considered that the migration regulations allegedly placed relatives of Spanish nationals in a “worse position” than relatives of other E.U. nationals in their respective countries.
The topic of migrant’s criminal records has been a heated subject among Spanish law enforcement officials over the past months, largely driven by the Spanish socialist government’s mass amnesty plan for illegal migrants living in Spain. Migrants that sought to benefit from the socialist government’s amnesty only had to comply with a list of notably lax requirements — one of which was to show proof that they possessed no criminal records.
The widely-rejected plan, spearheaded by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, initially claimed that it would grant “half a million” illegal migrants with residence and work permits, as well as other benefits. In reality, upwards of 1.3 million applications were filed by migrants prior to the June 30 deadline.
The Spanish newspaper El Mundo noted reported on Monday that, according to unnamed migration officials, it is estimated that as many as three million migrants could end up receiving “legal” status in Spain thanks to the mass amnesty plans. The sources reportedly explained that the estimates are based on the very tangible possibility that amnesty beneficiaries can then avail themselves of existing family reagrupation provisions to “legally” bring their relatives into Spain.
Although the Spanish Supreme Court paved the way for migrants with criminal records to attain Spanish residency, local outlets noted that the top court upheld other provisions barring asylum seekers from simultaneously accessing residency authorizations based on family or other ties while their asylum application remains pending. The court, also ratified that the time spent in Spain during the asylum processing period will not count towards such ties-based applications.
