Spain’s Supreme Court has ruled that time spent waiting for a final asylum decision cannot count toward the two-year residence requirement for ordinary arraigo residence permits. In Judgment No. 868/2026, issued on July 8, 2026, in contentious-administrative appeal 19/2025, the court’s Administrative Litigation Chamber upheld Articles 126(a) and 126(b) of Royal Decree 1155/2024, Spain’s Immigration Regulation. Article 126(a) bars a person who still holds asylum-applicant status from applying for ordinary arraigo. Article 126(b) excludes the asylum-processing period from the qualifying residence calculation. The judgment was published in Spain’s Official State Gazette on September 22, 2026.
The case was brought against the Spanish state by Asociación Coordinadora de Barrios, Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos de España (Apdhe), and Extranjeristas en Red. The ruling treats asylum and ordinary arraigo as separate legal routes: a person with a pending international-protection application cannot pursue ordinary arraigo at the same time, and time spent awaiting a final decision does not advance the two-year residence requirement. Once the asylum process ends, any application must meet the applicable requirements using qualifying residence time. Lesmes Serrano was identified as the judgment’s reporting judge.
The decision partially ruled on the challenge to the 2024 regulation, rather than annulling the regulation as a whole. The court struck down ten provisions or passages while leaving the rest in force, and rejected the challenge to the asylum-related arraigo restrictions. One of the provisions annulled was Article 197(2), which required certain foreign nationals to communicate with the administration exclusively by electronic means. The court found that requirement inconsistent with Article 14(3) of Law 39/2015 and Article 103(1) of the Spanish Constitution. It also cited the principle of proportionality, since the government had not shown that the affected people had adequate technical capacity or access to the necessary tools.
The ruling follows a challenge to the regulation by migrant-rights organizations, which argued that the rules leave asylum seekers in a precarious position if their protection claims are rejected. Previously, people awaiting asylum decisions could work after six months and, if ultimately rejected, seek regularization using time spent in Spain, provided they had stayed for at least two years. Under the provisions upheld by the court, time spent as an asylum applicant cannot count toward the ordinary arraigo residence requirement. The court distinguished asylum applicants from people in irregular residence, finding that Spanish and European Union law does not treat the two situations as comparable. The rules govern access to a domestic residence route, not whether a person qualifies for international protection under Directive 2013/32/EU or Spain’s Law 12/2009.
By the June 30 deadline for the extraordinary regularization process, 1,174,968 applications had been submitted, with 24.4% coming from asylum seekers, information from government data. Many have chosen to withdraw their asylum requests to join the new process, even if they fled war or persecution. The process has moved slowly: as of June 2, only 11,000 of the 1.17 million applications had been resolved, all positively.
The Supreme Court also upheld provisions of the extraordinary regularization decree that benefit migrants. Parents of immigrants can now obtain residency while already in Spain, whereas reunification previously required them to remain in their country of origin. Descendants can also regularize their status in Spain even if married, a change from the previous rule that limited this option to unmarried children. The court found that requiring children to be unmarried did not effectively prevent forced or child marriages. It could instead increase vulnerability by pushing minors into irregular status.
Extranjeristas en Red expressed concern over the court’s support for a rule requiring immigrant children to apply for regularization within six months of birth. Previously, there was no age limit. The group says passport delays at some consulates made it difficult for families to meet the deadline, complicating the process for many children.
The same judgment also addressed other immigration rules, including the prohibition on temporary-work employment agencies holding seasonal residence-and-work authorizations. The court annulled that restriction, with legal reporting linking its decision to European Union rules on restrictions on services. The rulings show the case-by-case nature of the decision: the court removed specific provisions while retaining the asylum-related restrictions and the wider structure of Royal Decree 1155/2024.
The decision reflects the tension between Spain’s efforts to manage migration and the circumstances of people seeking protection or regularization. The backlog of unresolved asylum cases remains impressive, and the rules may discourage some people from applying for asylum. Similar debates over migration policy and legal pathways have appeared in other contexts, including the challenges public figures face as they handle personal and legal obstacles, as in the recent story about Adriana Torrebejano's experience with recognition and bureaucracy in Castellbisbal.
