Spain’s greenhouse workers pin hopes on migrant amnesty

In Almería’s greenhouse belt, legal status is not an abstract policy debate. For Abdelmoujoud Erra, a 27-year-old Moroccan who has spent seven years in Spain without papers, it is the difference between surviving on about five euros an hour and earning seven or eight if he can finally work openly.

Erra is one of the workers gathered at roundabouts in the province, hoping to be hired for fruit and vegetable picking in Europe’s largest concentration of agricultural greenhouses. His documents were preserved only because he stored them at a Red Cross facility after a fire ripped through the informal settlement where he had been living, a reminder of how closely labor, housing and personal security overlap in this economy.

Spain’s Council of Ministers authorized urgent processing of an extraordinary regularization decree on January 27, opening the latest test of whether legal papers can improve workers’ power on the ground. The campaign began as Regularización Ya!, a citizen-led initiative that collected more than 700,000 signatures and drew support from more than 900 organizations, including the Catholic Church, trade unions and business associations. Applications were expected to open around April and run until late June.

The government says the measure is meant to let migrants “live with equal rights” and to respond to realities that affect coexistence, well-being and the economy. That argument fits a broader economic problem in Spain, where the OECD has warned that an ageing population and low employment among older workers make it increasingly important to align migration and skills policy with labour-market needs. In a country struggling to fill physically demanding jobs, regularization could shrink the shadow economy only if employers cannot keep exploiting undocumented labor.

That tension is visible in Almería, where more than 30,000 hectares of intensive crops sit under plastic, exports are worth about 3 billion euros a year and around 80,000 people work in the sector. EU material describes the area as a major winter vegetable supplier for Europe, with greenhouse clusters visible from space, but the same landscape has long been tied to substandard shanty towns, unreliable electricity and limited water access. European Commission records said there were 92 informal slums housing farm workers in the greenhouse zone during the COVID-era reporting period, while European Parliament records have documented exploitation, unpaid wages, abuse and dangerous conditions.

Supporters of the amnesty say regularization is a practical way to stabilize a sector that depends on migrant labour. Critics warn that it could overload public services and deepen social strain. For workers like Erra, the immediate question is more basic: whether papers will finally turn an already essential workforce into one that can demand better wages, safer housing and real enforcement.