Spanish authorities received 163,218 asylum applications last year, a new record, the Interior Ministry said on Thursday.
Compared to 2022, the number of asylum applications increased by 37%.
With this indicator, Spain ranks third among the member states of the European Union.
Nearly 80% of the applications were submitted by citizens of Latin American countries, including 60,534 applications by citizens of Venezuela, 53,564 from Colombia and 14,306 from Peru.
In 2023, the Home Office’s Office for Asylum and Refugees (OAR) made 92,963 decisions and only 12%, or 11,371 people, received permanent protection. These were mainly citizens of Afghanistan, Colombia, Honduras, Syria, Mali and Nicaragua.
For humanitarian reasons, 41,478 people, mainly Venezuelans, received temporary residence permits.
Spain also granted temporary protection to 33,928 Ukrainian citizens who fled their homeland due to the war started by Russia. The number of Ukrainian war refugees in Spain has thus risen to almost 195,000.
2024-01-11 18:12:00
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