Immigrants queue in front of the Asylum and Refugee Office at the Tarajal border in Ceuta. (EFE/ Reduan Dris/Archive)
The past year 2023 was not only a record year in terms of the number of migrants who arrived irregularly by sea and land in Spain, totaling 56,852. Applications for international protection also reached a historic high: 163,218, which is 37% more than last year and the highest figure since the establishment of the Office of Asylum and Refuge (OAR) of the Ministry of the Interior in 1992. These figures make Spain the third country to receive international protection in the European Union.
By nationality, according to a statement from the ministry, Venezuela was the country of origin of the most applicants, with 60,534 applications, 37% of the total, followed by Colombia (53,564) and Peru (14,306). The three countries account for 78.6% of the total registered files.
You may be interested: 2023 was the deadliest year for migrants: more than 6,600 died trying to reach Spain, 18 every day
In terms of submission location, the Community of Madrid has the most applications in the entire country (52,684), followed by Andalusia (25,948) and Catalonia (14,775). In addition, the Interior Ministry decided overall last year 92,963 international protection files, an increase of 1.8% Compared to the previous year.
Last year, 7,521 refugee statuses were granted, a record number to date and 26.5% of the statuses granted by the OAR since 2012 (28,232). The first five nationalities of people granted the status are Afghanistan, Syria, Nicaragua, Colombia and Honduras. Applications for subsidiary protection were also submitted for 3,850 people, mainly from Mali. 41,478 citizens, mostly Venezuelans, were granted residence and work for one year on humanitarian grounds.
You may be interested: “Spain’s southern border has become a space of impunity and violation of migrants’ rights.”
According to these figures, the rate of recognition of refugee status and subsidiary protection is 12.23 percent and the rate of international protection is 56.85 percent.
In 2023, 953 applications for recognition of stateless status were submitted 1,022 files were resolved. Statelessness is a procedure aimed at identifying among applicants persons who are not considered nationals of any State under its legislation and who declare that they lack nationality in accordance with the provisions of the Convention concerning the Status of Stateless Persons New York on 28 September 1954.
On the other hand, in 2023, the OAR increased the granting of the temporary protection regime to 33,928 people, bringing the total to almost 10,000 195,000 people were displaced by the Russian invasion of Ukraine that fall below this number in Spain.