Spain deals with record number of asylum and refugee claims

Spain´s Office of Asylum and Refuge (Oficina de Asilo y Refugio (OAR), part of the Ministry of the Interior, received 163,218 applications for international protection in 2023, 37 percent more than the previous year and the highest number since the creation of the office in 1992, according to provisional data closed on December 31. These figures place Spain as the third country receiving international protection in the European Union.

By nationality, the country of origin of the largest number of applicants has been Venezuela, with 60,534 requests, 37 percent of the total, followed by Colombia (53,564) and Peru (14,306). The three countries concentrate 78.6 percent of the total registered files.

By place of submission, the Community of Madrid heads the list of autonomous communities with the most applications (52,684), followed by Andalusia (25,948) and Catalonia (14,775). The Ministry of the Interior has also resolved a total of 92,963 international protection files in 2023, which represents an increase of 1.8 percent compared to the previous year.

Grant of international protection

Last year, 7,521 refugee statuses were granted, a record number to date and representing 26.5 percent of the statuses granted by the OAR since 2012 (28,232). The first five nationalities of people who have been granted status are Afghanistan, Syria, Nicaragua, Colombia and Honduras. Subsidiary protection has also been processed for 3,850 people, mainly from Mali. 41,478 citizens, mostly Venezuelans, have been granted residence and work for humanitarian reasons for one year.

According to these figures, the rate of recognition of refugee status and subsidiary protection has stood at 12.23 percent and the rate of international protection reaches 56.85 percent.

Processing of stateless person petitions

In 2023, 953 applications have been submitted for recognition of stateless person status and 1,022 cases have been resolved. Statelessness is a procedure aimed at identifying among applicants people who are not considered nationals by any State, in accordance with its legislation, and who declare that they lack nationality, in accordance with the provisions of the Convention on the Status of Stateless Persons, held in New York on September 28, 1954.

More than 33,900 new temporary protections

During 2023, the OAR has added the granting of the temporary protection regime to 33,928 people, which brings to almost 195,000 the number of citizens displaced by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine who are covered by this figure in Spain.

The Spanish Government launched this emergency procedure in March 2022 and delivered the first granting resolution on the 11th of that month, in compliance with the European Union agreement that authorised, for the first time, the application of the Temporary Protection Directive.

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