Seeking Refuge in Spain Transiting the Asylum System and Falling into Irregularity

Abstract

From the mid-1990s and into the first decade of the 2000s, Spain was processing about 5,500 asylum applications a year. However, with the sudden rise in the arrival of refugees in Europe in 2015 this figure steadily increased from 14,887 in 2015, to 31,740 in 2017 and then to 118,446 in 2019. Despite Covid-19 and its impact on mobility, Spain has continued to receive high numbers of applications 88,826 in 2020 and 65,482 in 2021. Most asylum seekers come from Latin America, notably Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Venezuela; North Africa, notably Algeria, Mali and Morocco, or from Palestine, Syria and Ukraine (Ministry of the Interior 2015 21). In the last three years Spain has moved from receiv- ing the fewest number of asylum applications among the European coun- tries to being top of the list along with Germany and France (Eurostat 2021).