IN MADRID – Step away from the touristy boulevard Barcelona‘s La Rambla and you enter the narrow streets of Raval, a district full of Asian restaurants, international shops and the occasional mosque.
The neighbourhood offers visitors a very different side to life in the Catalan capital. It is also a monument to city’s multiculturalism – and the rise in migration across the entire country in recent years, which have seen a sharp jump of 3.1 million immigrants since 2021.
That has prompted a sharp backlash. Like elsewhere across Europe, migration has become a lightning-rod issue in Spain , fuelling the rise of far-right parties, and negative attitudes towards migration. The Spanish government is now being forced to reckon with its more lenient policies.
Yet in neighbouring Portugal, the numbers tell a different story. Like Spain, Portugal’s foreign population soared during this period, rising by over 800,000 between 2021 and 2025, until they made up 14 per cent of the country’s entire population. But then a new government came in and changed its policies on migration – and the numbers have since started to slow.
In the UK, where immigration has been a top political issue for decades, fuelling support for Brexit and now Nigel Farage‘s Reform party, the government continues to struggle with balancing necessary levels of migration with public anger over overwhelmed housing and public services. Illegal immigration on small boats over the Channel, and asylum seekers being housed in houses in multiple occupation, have proven particular flashpoints for public anger.
So as Britain wrestles with its migration issue, what can it learn from how Spain and Portugal have either encouraged or restricted migration?
Why Spain has been an outlier in Europe
When it comes to migration in recent years, Spain’s government has been something of an outlier
The Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, who heads a socialist government, has said that apart from humanitarian values, immigration has helped to boost Spain’s economy, and has encouraged more people to move to the country.
The state of Spain’s economy has certainly helped his pro-migration message: the International Monetary Fund predicts growth of 2.5 per cent this year.
The message has been helped by the fact that around half of the new arrivals are from Latin America, can speak Spanish and more easily integrate into Spanish society.
However, Spain’s more welcoming attitude now appears to be changing. Earlier this year, Sánchez angered other EU countries by announcing a controversial migration amnesty, whereby migrants already in the country illegally could get legal status and work permits. Although the government expected 500,000 to apply, about 1.2 million have done so.
Furthermore in August, a majority of EU countries blamed Spain’s lax migration policy for encouraging over 80,000 people to cross illegally from Morocco to Ceuta, a tiny Spanish enclave, on a single day.
Protesters after a mass influx of migrants in Ceuta in September (Photo: Antonio Sempere / AFP via Getty Images)Now, a backlash is brewing. A majority of people in Spain now believe there are too many migrants, polls suggest. Three recent surveys found that between 53 and 60 per cent of Spaniards viewed immigration in negative terms or thought it put added pressure on public services.
One in five of Spain’s population of nearly 50 million are now born outside the country.
And in a snap election on 29 November, polls predict a right-wing coalition – composed of the conservative People’s Party and the far-right Vox party. Support for anti-immigrant populist Vox itself has risen to around 18 per cent in the polls. Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the People’s Party leader, is demanding a points system and quotas for immigration and priority for Latin Americans.
Kate Hooper, a senior policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute, told The i Paper: “It is a little early to tell what the result of the election [in Spain] would mean for immigration policy. It depends on to what extent you are seeing the centre-right being pressured by Vox.”
How Portugal put the brakes on
Just across the border, however, Portugal has taken a diametrically opposed stance towards migration after years of soaring numbers.
Between 2017 and 2024, more than 1.1 million people arrived in Portugal, after the previous centre-left government allowed foreign workers to enter without work visas and only apply for residency after a year working
In the four years from 2021 until 2025, the country’s foreign population rose by 824 914 people – with 2022 and 2023 in particular seeing very high numbers of 326,090 and 275,929 respectively, according to the Portuguese government.
The new arrivals included around 250,000 people from South Asia, many of whom were unable to speak Portuguese.
These numbers raised the population of foreign-born nationals from 4 per cent to 14 per cent of the total, and prompted growing support for the far-right Chega (Enough) party.
Supporters of the far-right party Chega in Lisbon (Photo: Horacio Villalobos#Corbis/Getty Images)“Portugal has this centre-right government which has been under pressure from Chega to get tougher on immigration,” Hooper said. “They had a similar situation to Spain. In both cases legal immigration has not been working very well.”
However, with the arrival of Portugal’s current centre-right government in 2024, the numbers began tailing off. In 2025, only 59,13 new foreign citizens arriving in the country, this first time in nine years where the number of immigrants was largely unaltered compared with the previous year, according to the Minister of the Presidency.
The drop was thanks to a succession of new restrictions on immigration, including tightening visa rules – with work visas now primarily targeted at highly skilled professionals with a job offer – re-establishing a border force, increasing the time needed to obtain citizenship (to seven years for EU citizens and people from Portuguese-speaking countries, and 10 years for non-EU nationals) and restricting family reunions, with a mandatory legal residence waiting period.
In 2024, the government ended the so-called expression of interest scheme that had allowed tourists to enter the country and adjust their status to legal residents locally. Now foreign nationals must obtain work or residence visas before entering. The change prompted a 60 per cent reduction in entries in the second half of the year, according to the government.
What the UK can learn
For Britain, where the issue of immigration is not going away. The issue has fuelled support for the far right and hardened anti-immigration sentiment, as in both Spain and Portugal.
Before the Brexit referendum in 2016, EU citizens made up the majority of all net migration to the UK. Since the vote, this has fallen, with net migration of EU citizens in 2025 was estimated at -42,000, according to the Migration Observatory. For non-EU immigration, numbers were 627,000 in 2025, 20 per cent lower than in 2024.
The UK’s foreign-born population has hit around 13 million, or around 19 per cent of the total UK population.
However, last year, net migration to the UK was 171,000, much lower than the record highs of 950,000 in 2022 and 2023.
The government of Andy Burnham has made clear it wants to move closer to the European Union – a stance that would likely involve having to liberalise migration rules for EU nationals, reversing a clampdown following Brexit.
“If Britain moved from the current relationship to the one the EU has with other member countries, then we would probably have free movement,” said Ben Brindle, a senior researcher at the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford. “Brussels would probably be quite firm on that.”
Brindle said that in terms of numbers, it would no longer be the graduate-only level migrants who were allowed in. “Net migration would be 200,000 or higher and people would be allowed to work in lower-skilled jobs. We would not be able to limit access to welfare as we do now,” he added.
However, the political risks would be enormous. Such a move could result in more of the backlash being seen in Spain and Portugal. Brindle said it would then be up to British politicians to decide if migration policy would change for people from the rest of the world.
“I think it is very unlikely that the rules would be liberalised for non-EU citizens [if Britain opened up to more migration from the EU],” Brindle said.
Whatever happens, the UK is not alone among European nations when it comes to the delicate balancing act of keeping migration at sufficient levels to power its workforce – and avoiding handing the levers of power to far-right parties.
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