RT Book, Section T1 Multilevel policy-making of refugee reception policies in Spain A1 Garcés-Mascareñas, Blanca A1 Moreno-Amador, Gracia K1 Asylum seekers K1 Reception system K1 Multilevel governance AB In this chapter, we analyse the multilevel policy-making of refugee reception policies in Spain (with a particular focus on Madrid and Barcelona) and how implementation took place in an already conflictual institutional, political and territorial context and given the enormous rise in the number of asylum applications since 2015. For the analysis, we draw on policy documents and newspaper articles and on fifty interviews with the main stakeholders (conducted from April 2016 to January 2019). The chapter reaches two main conclusions. First, though a centralised system would seem to leave little room for significant divergencies in the functioning, accessibility and quality of reception services, the lack of a regulatory development gave huge space for discretion to civil society organisations (CSOs). Second, as shown for the cases of Madrid and Barcelona, the lack of coordination between different administrative levels led to policy decoupling, which introduced an important degree of divergence between different local contexts. PB Routledge SN 9781003129950 YR 2022 FD 2022-03-08 LK https://hdl.handle.net/10433/26345 UL https://hdl.handle.net/10433/26345 LA en NO En Caponio, T., & Ponzo, I. (Eds.). (2022). Coping with Migrants and Refugees: Multilevel Governance across the EU (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003129950 NO Universidad Pablo de Olavide. Departamento de Trabajo Social y Servicios Sociales DS RIO RD May 22, 2026