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Immigrants arriving at the Canary Islands by boat. EP Legal Spain's lower house approves law against repeat offendingNew Penal Code reforms target repeat offenders while the 2026 Migrant Regularisation process remains on track despite opposition challenges
Friday, 27 March 2026, 14:14
Spain's lower house approved on Thursday the law against multi-recidivism, without the amendments proposed by opposition parties that would have made the regularisation of migrants more difficult.
The central government vetoed the amendments of the upper house prior to the approval of the law. The opposition called this act "anti-democratic" and "authoritarian".
The veto has prevented the inclusion of measures such as the modification of the immigration law, with which the right-wing parties wanted to obstruct the regularisation of half a million migrants, due to begin in the coming weeks.
The government defends the text that the lower house has brought forward as "rigorous", despite criticism from socialist party Podemos, which has branded it "classist".
Opposition party PP has warned that it will go to the Constitutional Court to denounce the government's veto. According to the upper house, the law against multi-recidivism will be insufficient if not accompanied by the amendments.
The government has stated that the veto was due to the fact that the implementation of the amendments would mean the creation of 400 civil servant posts in the provincial immigration brigades, which would entail an additional cost of 17 million euros and the creation of 491 new prosecutor posts, which would mean an increase in the public accounts of some 54 million euros.
The opposition accuses the government of "political opportunism" and of using "budgetary vetoes" in an arbitrary way to prevent measures such as the checking of criminal records to reside in Spain or the increase in the judicial workforce.
The opposition party from Catalonia denied racist intentions behind the amendments and said that their priority is to provide judges with real tools so that the police "don't arrest the same people ten times a week only for them to walk right out the other door".