Following publication of the Supreme Court’s July ruling in the Official State Gazette, the Ministry of the Interior has instructed immigration offices to stop rejecting residence applications purely because the applicant has a police or court record. As reported by The Objective on 23 September, officials must now carry out an individual proportionality assessment of each case. The change stems from Article 187.2 of Royal Decree 1155/2024, which the court declared null because it contradicted EU free-movement principles and jurisprudence requiring a factual, personal threat to public order. The Interior directive makes clear that prior offences will still weigh heavily but cannot, by themselves, bar a foreign national from legal stay. For global employers the clarification removes a major source of unpredictability in Spanish work-permit processing. Multinationals had complained that even minor misdemeanours in an assignee’s past—sometimes decades old—led to blanket denials, jeopardising project timelines. Immigration lawyers now expect a wave of appeals from candidates previously turned down under the automatic bar. The policy shift also aligns Spain with practices in France, Germany and the Netherlands, where authorities routinely balance criminal history against rehabilitation and family ties. However, the Guardia Civil’s Aliens Unit has warned that the workload for background investigations will rise, potentially lengthening decision times until extra staff are hired. Companies should review internal mobility screening to ensure disclosure of any criminal background early in the process and be ready to supply rehabilitation evidence, such as completion of sentences and character references, which Spanish caseworkers will increasingly demand.
Source: The Objective
