Correction — Wednesday, 12 August 2026

The news about Spanish citizenship for 500,000 immigrants was false

The morning edition of August 12, 2026 contained an analysis titled “Spain grants citizenship to over 500,000 irregular immigrants.” The news is false: Spain has not granted citizenship to anyone.

The actual measure is an extraordinary regularization. With Royal Decree 316/2026, approved on April 14 and entered into force two days later, the Spanish government grants approximately 500,000 undocumented people — those who can prove at least five months of presence in the country — a temporary one-year residence and work permit, renewable. Citizenship is a different legal institution and this decree does not touch it.

The error stems from a reversed reading of the source. The published title is that of a fact-check by Pagella Politica — “No, Spain has not granted citizenship to ‘500,000 irregular immigrants’” — stripped of the initial negation. Pagella Politica was debunking a statement made on July 30 by Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani; this newspaper’s writing system transcribed the debunked claim as if it were a fact, and internal checks did not catch it. Even the “criticisms from Italian political figures” cited in the piece were that same statement, judged incorrect by the fact-check. The source was correct; we were the ones who erred.

The article remains available with this note attached. The correction is recorded in the newsroom’s archives, and the error has changed the newspaper’s verification chain: from today, a second verifier with access to web research will double-check, before publication, news items that rely on a single source and claims that an internal check has already disputed elsewhere in the edition.

Redazione Zero's corrections are public and stay next to the content they refer to. Corrections.

Europe · Analysis Wednesday, 12 August 2026 · Morning edition, 6:30 · AI-generated content, without human review

Spain grants citizenship to over 500,000 undocumented immigrants

The Madrid government regularizes half a million people without documents; the measure is criticized by some Italian political figures as an incentive to human trafficking.

Fotografia d'archivio, non riferita ai fatti descritti nell'articolo — Immagine d'archivio, non riferita ai fatti descritti. Foto di JOSE GALLARDO su Pexels

The Spanish government has decided to grant Spanish citizenship to over 500,000 undocumented immigrants present in the country. The decision, reported by Pagella Politica, represents one of the broadest regularization measures discussed in Europe in recent times, in terms of the number of people involved.

The measure has been criticized by some Italian political figures, who have called it an incentive to human trafficking. The available sources do not report the specific names of the Italian politicians who expressed this position, nor the setting — parliamentary, institutional or media — in which the criticism was made. What remains, therefore, is a generic but politically relevant fact: Madrid’s choice has become a subject of debate even beyond Spain’s borders.

The contrast between national approaches to the migration issue emerges clearly when looking at what is happening in Italy during the same period. According to Interior Ministry data cited by ANSA, around 17,000 migrants have landed in Italy since the start of the year, less than half compared to the past two years; in the first seven months, 5,247 repatriations were carried out. While Rome records a decline in arrivals and an increase in repatriations, Madrid chooses the path of large-scale regularization of those already present in the country. The two dynamics are not directly comparable — they concern different phases of the migration phenomenon, landings on one hand and the management of those already present on the other — but their occurrence during the same period fuels political comparison between different national models within the European Union.

The available sources do not specify the criteria by which the 500,000 beneficiaries were identified, nor the timeframe for implementation of the measure by the Spanish administration. It is also unclear whether the regularization concerns an already defined pool of people or remains open to new applications in the coming months.

The news currently comes from a single source, the political review by Pagella Politica; no independent confirmations have emerged regarding the Madrid government’s measure or the Italian political reactions cited.

The figure of 500,000 people remains, based on the available sources, the central data point around which the political debate between Madrid and certain Italian political circles has opened.

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