Spain’s long-awaited extraordinary immigration regularisation, which closed on 30 June, was meant to usher hundreds of thousands of foreign residents into legal status. In practice, the surge in approvals has now moved the administrative pressure downstream to provincial police and immigration offices that must capture fingerprints and issue physical Tarjetas de Identidad de Extranjero (TIE). Córdoba is emblematic of the problem. According to the civil-service union CSIF, the province is grappling with **9,951 pending TIE files**—one of the highest backlogs in Andalusia—yet it has received only **two temporary staff** from the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration’s reinforcement programme. By comparison, Almería has been assigned eight extra officers and Málaga five. Union spokesperson Vidal Muñoz called the measure “a patch, not a solution,” warning that appointment slots vanish in minutes and systems regularly crash. The administrative gridlock has real-world consequences for employers and assignees. New hires cannot sign employment contracts, newly regularised freelancers cannot issue invoices, and global mobility teams report missed travel deadlines because employees lack the plastic card needed to re-enter Spain. International companies with satellite operations in Córdoba’s auto-parts and agri-tech clusters told El Debate they have begun rerouting foreign talent to Seville to avoid delays. CSIF is demanding a structural review of the local staffing table (RPT), a digital overhaul of the police booking system, and a coordinated “shock plan” similar to the one launched in Barcelona last year. Until then, HR managers are advised to **book TIE appointments in neighbouring provinces** where capacity exists and to issue remote-work letters so that recruits can begin onboarding while paperwork catches up. In the medium term, experts say the bottleneck could undermine the success of Spain’s 2026 regularisation, the largest since 2005. “Legal status on paper is meaningless if people cannot access the labour market,” notes migration lawyer Marta González. She urges companies to factor in eight-to-twelve-week lead times for TIE issuance when planning start dates.
Source: El Debate
