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Solidarity Towns and Cities in Spain
Published reviews: France || Spain || Sweden || Italy || Eastern Germany ||
Coming soon: The UK || Austria || Greece || Portugal ||
In this article on Solidarity Towns and Cities in Europe, The Immigrant Times features a cross-section of Spanish communities, from Bilbao in the north to El Ejido in the south. (Photo: The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao)
Executive summary
September 2026: While northern and central European countries have tightened asylum rules and reinstated internal border checks, Spain has pursued a divergent strategy, driven by severe demographic decline and structural labour shortages.
The national fertility rate hovers at about 1.16 births per woman, while the native-born workforce is shrinking by more than 200,000 workers each year. Analysis by the Bank of Spain and BBVA Research indicates that foreign-born workers contributed between 20 and 25 per cent to Spain’s GDP per capita growth in recent years, with foreign employment now accounting for more than 20 per cent of the national labour force.
This reliance culminated in the 2026 administrative regularisation framework, following the citizen-backed Popular Legislative Initiative (ILP), which granted one-year work and residence permits to undocumented residents who demonstrated five months of continuous residence prior to January 2026.
The political environment, however, is deeply divided. Maritime arrivals in the Canary Islands and ongoing pressure on the border fences of Ceuta and Melilla dominate public debate. The far-right party Vox has capitalised on these events to expand its national vote share, positioning immigration as a primary wedge issue and campaigning against municipal registration of irregular migrants ahead of the next general election, scheduled for spring 2027.
Despite national political friction, the day-to-day mechanics of migrant reception and integration are governed locally. Spain’s municipal registry (padrón municipal) serves as the country’s foundational integration mechanism: by law (Organic Law 4/2000), municipalities must register every resident, regardless of immigration status, thereby automatically granting access to the regional public health system (tarjeta sanitaria) and to mandatory schooling (ages 6–16).
In its 'Solidarity Towns and Cities' series, The Immigrant Times (IMT) evaluates six Spanish municipalities that represent a cross-section of the country's towns and cities. The survey's authors identified three principal common factors.
Housing shortages
The primary source of community strain across both metropolitan suburbs (Santa Coloma de Gramenet, Fuenlabrada) and agricultural hubs (El Ejido, Alzira) is housing.
Spain’s private rental sector is small yet severely inflated, while public social housing stock accounts for less than 2.5 per cent of all dwellings (compared with an EU average of nine per cent). This forces migrant households into informal sub-lets, overcrowded flats, or peripheral shantytowns.
Institutional innovation vs resource deficits
Municipal mediation teams, anti-rumour networks, and grassroots NGOs largely carry out frontline integration rather than state apparatuses. While local models effectively defuse street-level tensions, municipal social workers face chronic underfunding and administrative overload.
Dual-language complexity
In autonomous communities with co-official languages (the Basque Country, Catalonia, and Valencia), integration requires navigating both linguistic and administrative tracks, creating unique challenges for second-language acquisition among children and adults alike.
Bilbao
Basque Country, northern Spain
Bilbao, home to the world-famous Guggenheim Museum, is the largest city in the Basque Country and the administrative capital of Biscay, with a population of 346,000. Following post-industrial restructuring in the 1990s, the urban economy shifted from steel manufacturing and shipbuilding to high-value services, logistics via the Port of Bilbao, biomedical research, higher education, and cultural tourism.
Immigration
Foreign nationals make up around 14 per cent of Bilbao’s population, while foreign-born residents, including naturalised citizens, account for more than 18 per cent. The largest immigrant communities come from Colombia, Morocco, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Honduras, and Bolivia, alongside long-standing Chinese commercial populations and West African communities from Senegal and Nigeria.
Diversity is geographically concentrated in the historic southern railway districts of San Francisco, Zabala, and Bilbao La Vieja, where the proportion of immigrants exceeds 30 per cent.
Integration
The 'Area of Equality, Coexistence, and Immigration' oversees municipal integration under the Bilbao Intercultural City Plan. The city council maintains a flexible padrón policy, registering unhoused individuals and those in collective accommodation, with registrations verified by social services.
The municipal employment agency, Lan Ekintza, provides targeted vocational apprenticeships in logistics, hotel management, and technical trades, coordinating closely with regional employment services (Lanbide). The city operates three municipal reception centres, which offer free legal assistance for residency applications, international protection claims, and family reunification.
Solidarity at work
Bilbao is the international pioneer of the Zurrumurruen Aurkako Sarea (ZAS! Anti-Rumour Network), launched in 2012 and later adopted by the Council of Europe.
The city trains hundreds of 'anti-rumour agents', including local business owners, civic workers, bus drivers, and community leaders, who actively counter xenophobic narratives about public benefits, housing, and crime in everyday settings.
In San Francisco and Bilbao La Vieja, neighbourhood organisations such as Sarean and the Coordinadora de Grupos de San Francisco, Zabala y Bilbao La Vieja run community kitchens, homework clubs, legal defence clinics, and social art workshops to bring local Basque residents and newcomers together.
Friction and strain
Sustained rent inflation across central Bilbao has made affordable housing virtually unobtainable for minimum-wage earners, driving overcrowding and subletting in dilapidated flats across the inner ring. Visible street homelessness among young, unhoused North African migrants has sparked intense political debate over public safety in the San Francisco neighbourhood, prompting increased policing operations and complaints of racial profiling by local human rights organisations.
Legazpi
Basque Country, northern Spain
Legazpi is an industrial municipality in the Urola Garaia district of Gipuzkoa, located in a narrow river valley and with a population of 8,400. The local economy is heavily industrialised, anchored by traditional metallurgy, precision tools, and automotive subcontractors such as Bellota Herramientas, alongside small-scale machinery workshops and forestry operations.
Immigration
Legazpi experienced significant internal migration from Extremadura, Castile, and Andalusia during the industrial expansion of the 1960s. Over the past two decades, international arrivals have reconstituted the local workforce. Foreign nationals now make up more than eight per cent of the local population. The main foreign-born communities are from Morocco (nearly 35 per cent of non-EU nationals), Pakistan, Colombia, Nicaragua, and Romania.
Integration
Under Mayor Eric Gálvez Álvarez, Legazpi's town council restructured its municipal social services department to establish an integrated reception desk. In early 2024, the municipality published the Ongi etorri gida (Welcome Guide), available in Basque, Castilian Spanish, Arabic, and Urdu. The guide outlines step-by-step procedures for municipal census registration (empadronamiento), which guarantees access to the local clinic at the Legazpi Primary Healthcare Centre and enrolment in the town’s two primary schools (Haztegi Ikastola and Domingo Agirre Eskola).
The municipality subsidises basic language immersion programmes, offering concurrent pathways in Basque (euskera) through the municipal Euskaltegi and in basic Spanish literacy.
Solidarity at work
Civic solidarity in Legazpi is facilitated through direct community mediation. The town council established a formal network of 13 volunteer Community Ambassadors (Gizarte Enbaxadoreak), comprising established migrant residents who speak Arabic, Urdu, Romanian, and Spanish.
These 'ambassadors' provide peer-to-peer support, assist newly arrived families with administrative paperwork, and help teachers communicate with non-Spanish-speaking parents.
Complementing this, local civic groups and the parish Caritas team organise Empalabramiento, a weekly language and socialisation circle for immigrant women that combines functional language practice with collective childcare. The local cultural centre, Kultur Etxea, hosts regular intercultural forums to review municipal decisions alongside immigrant associations.
Friction and strain
The town’s steep valley topography physically restricts new residential development, leading to a severe shortage of rental accommodation. Private landlords frequently require permanent employment contracts and substantial deposits, pricing out newcomers and driving sub-letting in older housing stock built for industrial workers in the 1960s.
In addition, the bilingual curriculum requirements of the Basque educational model (Model D, predominantly taught in Basque) place significant linguistic strain on migrant children arriving without prior exposure to the language.
Santa Coloma de Gramenet
Barcelona metro region
Santa Coloma de Gramenet is a densely populated urban municipality within the first metropolitan ring of Barcelona, situated along the Besòs river. It has a population of about 120,500 residents packed into just seven square kilometres (2.7 square miles), making it one of Europe's most densely populated urban centres. Its economy is predominantly domestic and service-based, with residents commuting across Barcelona for retail, healthcare, logistics, and construction work.
Immigration
Historically built by southern Spanish internal migrants in the mid-twentieth century, Santa Coloma has become an international hub over the past 25 years.
Foreign nationals currently account for 22 per cent of the municipal population. The largest national groups are Chinese, Pakistani, Moroccan, Ecuadorian, Colombian, and Honduran. In the central neighbourhood of Fondo, foreign-born residents make up more than 40 per cent of the local population.
Integration
The city council’s reception model is managed by the Servei d'Atenció a la Immigració (SAI) and the Oficina Local d'Habitatge. In 2010, Santa Coloma established Catalonia’s first municipal anti-rumour network (Xarxa Antirumors), training community advocates and municipal employees to challenge myths about school places and social aid.
In education, municipal schools deploy dedicated reception classrooms (aules d'acollida) that provide intensive language immersion for non-Catalan-speaking children, enabling their transition into the mainstream Catalan curriculum within twelve months.
Solidarity at work
Grassroots civic engagement is led by neighbourhood associations (associacions de veïns), which were formed during early labour struggles. In Fondo and Raval, municipal neighbourhood mediators (mediadors comunitaris) resolve disputes in high-occupancy apartment buildings over communal maintenance, noise, and stairwell cleaning.
The local Red Cross branch, Caritas (Càritas Diocesana de Barcelona), and migrant-led associations run collective food distribution hubs, homework clubs in municipal libraries, and free Catalan and Spanish literacy courses. Migrant shopkeepers in the Fondo commercial district actively participate in local merchants' associations (Agrupació de Comerç i Indústria), running joint promotional campaigns and bilingual community street festivals.
Friction and strain
Extreme population density places heavy pressure on public amenities, particularly primary health centres (CAP) and municipal sports facilities. Educational segregation remains an unresolved challenge: several public schools in Fondo have immigrant student enrolments exceeding 70 per cent, prompting middle-class families to move to state-subsidised private schools (concertadas). Substandard housing and split apartments (pisos patera) remain prevalent, creating fire hazards and frequent landlord-tenant disputes.
Fuenlabrada
Madrid metropolitan region
Fuenlabrada is an industrial and commercial city 20 kilometres south of central Madrid, with a population of 190,000. The local economy is driven by heavy logistics, industrial manufacturing, retail distribution, and wholesale trade. It is home to the Cobo Calleja industrial estate, an enterprise zone covering 162 hectares and serving as Europe's primary wholesale hub for Chinese-manufactured goods and Asian import-export trade.
Immigration
Foreign nationals make up 14.4 per cent of Fuenlabrada's municipal population, with a further seven per cent being naturalised citizens. The largest groups are from Romania (over 20 per cent of all foreign nationals), Morocco, China, Colombia, and Peru.
The Chinese community is structurally integrated into the management and operation of Cobo Calleja, where more than 800 businesses operate. Other migrant cohorts are concentrated in logistics, personal care, and construction.
Integration
Fuenlabrada is a founding member of the Spanish Network of Intercultural Cities (RECI) and participates in the Council of Europe’s intercultural policy initiatives.
The municipality operates the Centre for Initiatives for Training and Employment (CIFE), which offers vocational upskilling in warehouse management, electrical systems, and commercial logistics, as well as tailored Spanish classes. The municipal Social Welfare Department maintains an Intercultural Mediation Service staffed by dedicated social workers stationed at health clinics, schools, and civic administrative centres.
Solidarity at work
Civic solidarity is realised through coordinated public-private partnerships. The city council and the Association of Chinese Merchants of Cobo Calleja maintain a standing liaison committee to resolve zoning, security, and transport disputes.
Local neighbourhood associations (asociaciones vecinales) run intercultural youth leagues, after-school sports academies, and summer camps that bring together native and immigrant youth. The municipal Mesa de la Solidaridad coordinates food pantries, clothing drives, and emergency financial assistance with local charities, ensuring direct support for undocumented workers awaiting legal regularisation.
Friction and strain
Rapid increases in rental prices across the Madrid metropolitan belt have outstripped wage growth, driving high rates of housing instability and pushing households into unauthorised shared flats.
Heavy commercial heavy-vehicle traffic and industrial parking around Cobo Calleja generate ongoing friction with adjacent residential neighbourhoods. Furthermore, primary healthcare centres operate with persistent staffing deficits, a consequence of systemic regional funding freezes across the Madrid public health system (SERMAS).
Alzira
Valencia Province
Alzira is an agro-industrial city and the administrative seat of the Ribera Alta district in the Province of Valencia, with a population of more than 46,000. The local economy is based on the Mediterranean citrus fruit trade, packing and processing plants, cold-storage logistics, and automotive parts manufacturing, and is supplemented by its role as a regional administrative and healthcare centre (home to the Hospital Universitari de la Ribera).
Immigration
Demand for manual labour in the surrounding citrus groves and sorting plants has made Alzira a destination for international labour. Foreign nationals make up 15.6 per cent of the municipal population. The largest nationalities are Romanian, Moroccan, Bulgarian, Colombian, and Senegalese.
Migration follows seasonal cycles, peaking during the primary citrus harvest between October and April, when thousands of contract pickers converge on the Ribera plain.
Integration
Integration is coordinated by the municipal PANGEA office (Reception and Integration Service for Immigrants), with support from the Valencian regional government. The office provides immediate empadronamiento, guides workers through residency renewal applications under the arraigo system, and offers language classes in both Castilian Spanish and Valencian.
The municipal employment foundation, IDEA Alzira, offers technical training in tractor operation, forklift licensing, and phytosanitary certification, helping agricultural labourers transition into formal industrial and logistics roles.
Solidarity at work
Civic networks are organised in direct response to the agricultural calendar. Agricultural worker unions (CCOO and UGT) collaborate with local farm cooperatives and Caritas Alzira to distribute safety equipment, translation guides on collective-bargaining rights, and emergency aid packages during seasonal weather-related closures.
Secular NGOs and volunteer networks run evening language exchanges and community orientation sessions, while local schools maintain direct communication channels with immigrant families to prevent child absenteeism during peak fruit-harvest periods.
Friction and strain
The primary challenge is the structural vulnerability of the seasonal labour model. Fluctuations in citrus market prices and severe weather events (such as intense Mediterranean heatwaves and unseasonal autumn storms) can shorten seasonal harvests, leaving agricultural labourers without income or the employment contracts required for immigration renewals.
Landlords frequently refuse to grant short-term residential leases to seasonal field workers, leading to housing shortages and informal tenancy in low-quality dwellings on the rural periphery.
El Ejido
Almeria, Andalusia, southern Spain
El Ejido is an agricultural powerhouse in the Poniente Almeriense district of Almería, with a population of nearly 90,000. The municipality is the epicentre of Europe’s intensive covered agriculture, known as the "Sea of Plastic" (Mar de Plástico), where more than 13,000 hectares of high-yield plastic greenhouses produce hundreds of thousands of tonnes of tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and courgettes each year for wholesale distribution across Europe.
Immigration
Foreign nationals make up 32 per cent of El Ejido's population, making it one of the most internationally diverse municipalities in Spain. More than 90 nationalities live in the town, with Moroccan nationals forming the largest community (more than 60 per cent of all foreign residents), alongside significant populations from Romania, Senegal, Mali, Guinea-Bissau, and Colombia.
Some 3,000 to 5,000 additional undocumented workers are believed to live within the agricultural zone.
Integration
Integration operates in a highly demanding and polarised environment. The municipal council maintains social service reception units in peripheral administrative centres such as Las Norias de Daza and Santa María del Águila, which manage emergency assistance, child welfare, and school registrations.
Public schools run specialised language reinforcement programmes (Aulas Temporales de Adaptación Lingüística - ATAL), while agricultural trade bodies (such as COAG and APROA) provide mandatory occupational safety, hygiene, and pesticide-handling courses in multiple languages.
Solidarity at work
Given the scale of the humanitarian challenge, civil society organisations are the primary safety net in El Ejido. Organisations including Caritas Almería, the Red Cross, Cepaim Foundation, and the Sindicato de Obreros del Campo (SOC-SAT) operate mobile clinics that visit rural greenhouse tracts, distributing clean drinking water, hygiene kits, and emergency provisions to workers.
Cepaim and local charities run walk-in clinics in the town centre to help workers obtain documentation for regularisation procedures, while neighbourhood cultural associations organise communal sports tournaments, Ramadan community meals, and educational support groups for immigrant children.
Friction and strain
Social cohesion remains strained in El Ejido. In local, regional, and national elections, the municipality consistently records some of the highest vote shares in Spain for the far-right Vox party, often exceeding 35 to 40 per cent.
The most pressing humanitarian and infrastructural problem is the persistence of informal shantytowns (chabolas) built from plastic sheeting and wooden pallets on the margins of greenhouse estates. These settlements lack running water, electricity, and sewage disposal, and are prone to periodic fires.
In the town centre, widespread refusal by private landlords to rent to North and West African single men sustains spatial segregation and high social tension.
Key sources & documentation
Official data: Instituto Nacional de Estadística (INE) Municipal Padrón Census (2024–2026); Banco de España Economic Bulletin & Research Papers; Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration official bulletins.
Institutional & civic documentation: Council of Europe Intercultural Cities Network (RECI) evaluations; Ayuntamiento de Legazpi: Ongi etorri gida (2024); Bilbao Intercultural City Plan & ZAS! Network Documentation; Cepaim Foundation: Annual Reports on Informal Settlements in Almería; Fundación Secretariado Gitano & Provivienda Housing Reports.
Local reporting & regional analysis: El País (Economy & Society); El Correo (Bilbao & Basque Country); Diario de Almería; Levante-EMV (Valencia); La Vanguardia (Catalonia).
About this series
Solidarity Towns and Cities is an editorial project by The Immigrant Times (IMT). The series documents practical, community-level responses to immigration, asylum, and demographic change across European towns and cities. Each report applies five consistent analytical lenses: demographic and economic data, immigration history, municipal integration policy, grassroots solidarity initiatives, and the local friction and infrastructure strains associated with demographic transition.
Readers are invited to suggest other European towns and cities that they feel The Immigrant Times should feature.
Published reviews: France || Spain || Sweden || Italy || Eastern Germany || Coming soon: The UK || Austria || Greece || Portugal ||
Further reading from The Immigrant Times: Civic Solidarity Initiative || Immigrants to revive rural Spain || Teaching refugees in Spain || Work permits for undocumented immigrants in Spain || Immigrant workers boost Spanish economy ||
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