Among the measures that Pedro Sánchez intends to promote to try to alleviate the migration crisis is what he calls “circular migration”: training people in the countries of origin to go to Spain to replace seasonal workers and, in doing so, mitigate the arrival of irregulars. The data that the government manages are those that it needs between 200,000 and 250,000 one year to maintain the welfare state.
However, only one 26.2% Spaniards, mainly left-wing, support the initiative unveiled by Sánchez during his African tour this week. On the contrary, a 50.8% considers it “reckless” as it could cause a call effect on other undocumented migrants.
This is reflected in the latest SocioMétrica barometer published today by EL ESPAÑOL, carried out in the days immediately following Sánchez’s statement in Mauritania, this Wednesday. In fact, the latest barometer of the Sociological Research Center (CIS) of July placed immigration as the fourth problem that most worries the Spanish, much more than in previous months.
There is another alternative that only 17.2% of Spaniards are considering: the popular legislative initiative (ILP) to regularize 500,000 irregular migrants who have been residing in Spain for years. They would be equivalent to two years of contributions regular.
The philosophy of Sánchez’s plan is that, while it is almost impossible to stop the arrival of migrants, it can at least be done in a controlled manner, with people who are originally trained and capable of contributing to society. The ILP, on the other hand, assumes that, given that a large number of these foreigners They already live in SpainIt is better to regularize them and immediately bring them into social security and revive the economy.
As emergency brake Due to the massive arrival of undocumented foreigners, PP and Vox proposed at the beginning of the summer to use ships of the armed forces as a deterrent. On this point, widely criticized at the beginning, there are already 65.6% of Spaniards who support it.
The Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaskahas repeatedly highlighted the results of cooperation at source on deterrence plans. So much so that, according to data from the Interior, between 35 and 40% of migrant departures are avoided, which for the minister means having saved these lives.
In this sense, an overwhelming majority 94.5% Spaniards believe that the European Union should assume part of the distribution of unaccompanied foreign minors who arrive on Spanish shores, given that Spain is one of its external borders. This policy is also not implemented in similar countries, such as Italy or Greece.
Behind closed doors, a majority of 77.3% also consider that they should be distributed proportionally to the population across the entire territory.
According to Sociometrica data, these policies are insufficient for the Spanish. In fact, 66.6% of respondents believe that the government should Tighten your strategy to combat irregular migration, almost three times more numerous (26.4%) than those who advocate “promoting access for humanitarian reasons”.
In this case, it is representative that 40% of socialist voters defend this hardening, while 48.5% support a greater opening of the borders.
The government, for its part, boasts of the results of its policy of integrating immigrants into Spanish society. Currently, the 12% of Social Security affiliates They are foreigners, 60% of 18-23 year-olds are registered – a much higher percentage than the Spaniards themselves – and 300,000 have regularised their situation since 2021, Moncloa sources say.
However, the vast majority of them have arrived in Spain irregularly, as there are practically no channels that allow them to do so in a legal, orderly and safe manner. This is how the aforementioned circular migration plan was born.
All this, despite the fact that 39.5% of Spaniards consider that the number of legal migrants is already “excessive”, compared to 26.9% who consider it “sufficient” and the 28.1% than “insufficient”. In other words, only 28.1% of citizens believe the government’s forecast that 250,000 foreigners will be needed per year until 2050 to maintain the welfare state.
However, more than half of the voters of Sumar (56.9%) and Podemos (62.7%) consider that Spain needs migrants; in the PSOE, they are more divided (42.5% think no and 39.3% think yes).
Technical sheet
The study was carried out by the company SocioMétrica between August 26 and 30, 2024 through 2,310 random interviews taken from its own panel of n=10,000 individuals representative of all Spanish sociodemographic segments.
The final results were finely adjusted using a weighting variable that takes into account gender, age, province and electoral memory during the last three elections.
Maximum error: 3% (the average sociometric deviation of the vote in generation 23 was 1.1% and in the EU24 was 0.8%). No confidence level is applicable because this is a non-probability sampling.
Study Director: Gonzalo Adán. PhD in Political Psychology and Professor of Psychometrics and Social Research Techniques. SocioMétrica is a member of Insights + Analytics Spain.
