Spanish
The leader of the conservative Popular Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, proposed this Tuesday to toughen the requirements for immigrants to access Spanish nationality, raising "the level of linguistic, cultural and constitutional requirements". "Spanish nationality is not given away, it is earned", he said.
In an event in Barcelona, accompanied by senior officials from his party, Feijóo outlined the ten points of the PP's immigration plan, which seeks to promote "orderly, legal and humane" immigration, in the face of the current "lack of control", for which he blamed the Government.
In addition to already known measures, such as the points-based visa or unifying immigration competencies under a single authority, the leader of the PP, the main opposition group in Spain, announced new ones, such as the tightening of requirements to obtain citizenship, reinforcing the presence of police forces at the borders, or that social benefits such as the minimum living income are linked to job searching.
"Spanish nationality cannot be a mere administrative procedure. It must be above all a recognition of those who have demonstrated with deeds their willingness to integrate, to respect our laws and to contribute to the country that welcomes them," he maintained.
According to Feijóo, "being Spanish is not just living in Spain, it is participating in a common project, sharing a history, values and a destiny, it is feeling part of something bigger than oneself".
The leader of the PP has chosen immigration as one of the main focuses of his proposals to confront the socialist party, which currently heads a coalition government with the left-wing group Sumar, led by Pedro Sánchez.
One of the measures he proposes, the points-based visa, is not new among his party's proposals, it was already proposed in 2008 -without applying it later- by former Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, but now it comes in a context in which there have been outbreaks of xenophobic violence in Spain and with the discourse against migrants on the rise, especially by far-right parties like Vox.
These conservative approaches contrast with those defended by the socialist party and its leader, Pedro Sánchez, who this Tuesday, in a radio interview, spoke positively about immigration as a driver for the Spanish economy and rejected linking immigration with crime or as a factor that takes away jobs from Spaniards.
Immigration has become the main problem for Spaniards, surpassing unemployment, according to the latest barometer of the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS), a public body, released last September.
In just three months, immigration went from being the ninth concern for Spaniards to the first. The sum of those who identify it as the first, second, or third problem in the poll went from 11.2% recorded in the June barometer to 30.4% in September.
