As other countries in Europe talk up stronger immigration controls, new data shows that Spain has bolstered its seasonal worker programme by a quarter.
Despite increasingly polarising immigration discourse across Europe, Spain in 2025 boosted its short-term seasonal hires by 25 percent.
This comes as Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s ruling Socialists (PSOE) have pushed a ‘circular migration’ model and bucked the trend as one of few left-leaning, pro-immigration voices on the continent in recent years. Applications for work and residency permits in Spain surged by almost 50 percent following immigration reforms passed last year.
Programmes to recruit non-EU immigrants in their countries of origin to work in seasonal industries saw the recruitment of 25,767 workers in Spain throughout 2025, according to data from the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration.
These are foreign employees who, after completing their work in Spain for a defined period of time, return to their home countries.
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This means the number of seasonal workers hired through the so-called Collective Management of Recruitment at Source (Gecco) has increased by 25 percent compared to last year, when some 20,000 worked seasonally.
The latest figures show that these short-term, sector-specific programmes, which first began in 2000, have grown significantly over the last three years. They consist of the simultaneous processing and granting of residence and work permits for non-EU foreigners who are not in or living in Spain and who are hired exclusively from their countries of origin.
Up to 17 countries have participated in the programmes this year, including Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Gambia, Guatemala, Honduras, Morocco, Mauritania, Mexico, Peru, the Dominican Republic, Senegal, El Salvador, Uruguay and India.
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Agriculture is by far the main sector recruiting seasonal workers from abroad, mostly for fruit picking, a sector that has historically used these seasonal programmes during the harvesting season.
Moroccan workers made up 81 percent of all hires. In addition, nine out of ten of these seasonal contracts were for women, with an average age of 43.
The second largest nationality was Colombian, with 13 percent of those hired, followed by Honduran citizens, with 4 percent.
Spanish daily El País also notes a significant geographical concentration of seasonal workers, too.
Though these workers were spread across 21 provinces throughout the country, Huelva, in Andalusia, was the province that took in the most seasonal workers, with 84 percent of the total.
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