Interior of the center for asylum seekers in Madrid.
Photo: Pablo Gracia
Nationals of Venezuela, Colombia and Peru accounted for 78% of asylum applications registered last year by the Asylum and Refugees Office in Spain, whose total amounted to 163,218, 37% more than the previous year and the highest number registered since the body was founded in 1992.
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According to preliminary data completed on December 31 and published this Thursday by the Spanish Ministry of the Interior, the Asylum and Refugees Office of this ministry received 163,218 applications for international protection in 2023, a figure that represents Spain as a third country of international protection receives the European Union.
Three Latin American countries accounted for 78.6% of registered applications: Venezuela, with 60,534 applications, accounted for 37% of the total, followed by Colombia with 53,564 applications and Peru with 14,306 applications.
By location, the Community of Madrid tops the list with the most requests with 52,684, followed by Andalusia (25,948) and Catalonia (14,775).
Last year, the Interior Ministry processed a total of 92,963 international protection applications, an increase of 1.8% compared to the previous year.
7,521 refugee statuses were granted, an all-time high
During this period, 7,521 refugee statuses were granted, which is also a record number and accounts for 26.5% of all refugee statuses granted by the Asylum and Refugee Office since 2012.
The most frequently granted nationalities were Afghanistan, Syria, Nicaragua, Colombia and Honduras.
In 2023, 3,850 people, mostly from Mali, applied for subsidiary protection and 41,478 citizens, mostly Venezuelans, were granted residence and work permits on humanitarian grounds.
Accordingly, the rate of recognition of refugee status and subsidiary protection is 12.23% and that of international protection is 56.85%.
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195,000 people displaced by the Ukraine war with temporary protection
According to the Interior Ministry, the Asylum and Refugee Office granted the temporary protection scheme to 33,928 people in 2023, bringing the number of citizens displaced by the Russian invasion of Ukraine who fall under this figure in Spain to almost 195,000.
The Spanish government initiated this emergency procedure in March 2022, days after the outbreak of war.
During the past year, 953 applications for recognition of stateless status were also submitted and 1,022 dossiers related to this procedure were resolved, with the aim of identifying persons who are not considered nationals by any state and who claim to have no nationality.
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