Earlier today, I published the Morning Compass briefing, which provides an overview of the news. Here, I share a few thoughts on Pope Leo’s visit to Spain and how the country addresses questions around migration policy. The transcript is below for those who prefer to read.
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Transcript
I want to talk about something different today. Not the bombings in Iran. Not the inflation. But something that is happening in Europe that I think tells a different story about how governments can choose to respond to migration.
This week, Pope Leo traveled to the Canary Islands. These are Spanish islands, closer to Africa than to mainland Europe, and they are one of the main entry points for migrants crossing from West Africa by boat.
He went there to meet migrants, listen to their stories, and lay flowers in memory of those migrants who never arrived.
Thousands of people have drowned trying to reach those islands. In 2024 alone, almost 47,000 people arrived on the Canary Islands by sea, a record figure. Many others disappeared in the Atlantic. Entire boatloads have vanished without a trace.
Earlier in his trip, on Monday, the Pope addressed the Spanish parliament in Madrid. He stood before lawmakers and said that the moral greatness of a nation is shown by how it treats the most fragile people within its borders. He received a prolonged standing ovation.
Now he has traveled to the Canary Islands, to a port that became known as the “dock of shame” in 2020. Migrants who arrived there were forced to sleep in the open air with nothing but a blanket. There were no showers. No legal advice. Some were held for weeks, far longer than the 72 hours the law allowed. Spain’s ombudsman eventually forced the camp to close.
Leo did not look away from that history. He named it. And he made that argument I just mentioned, and it’s one you don’t hear much from political leaders right now: that a society’s moral character is measured by how it treats its most vulnerable.
Now here is the part I find most interesting.
Spain is doing something almost no other Western government is doing right now. It has approved a plan that could grant legal status to around half a million undocumented immigrants. People who can show they have been living in Spain for at least five months before December 31, 2025, and have no serious criminal record, can apply for residence and work permits.
The government’s argument is practical as much as moral. Spain has an aging population and serious labor shortages in key sectors. Hotels, construction companies, car workshops cannot find enough local workers. These migrants are already doing those jobs, already living in those communities. Legal status recognizes a reality that already exists.
One car workshop manager told the BBC that when they started hiring young migrants, they faced fierce criticism on social media. People saying migrants were stealing Spanish jobs. She said: “Nobody was looking at migrants as persons.” Today the business employs around 30 migrant workers, including a 19-year-old from Ivory Coast who sends several hundred euros home to his family each month.
Then there is Bakary Jaiju, from The Gambia. He was 19 when he climbed into a wooden boat and spent seven days at sea, running out of food and water, too afraid to sleep in case he fell overboard. He survived. He is now in Tenerife, learning Spanish, trying to build a legal future. But many people who left on similar boats never arrived.
I want to be honest about the full picture. The Canary Islands have been overwhelmed at times. There are relevant debates about pace and capacity. And the European Union has just agreed a new migration pact that expands fast-track border procedures and makes it easier for member states to detain and return people who arrive without permission. Europe as a whole is not moving in Spain’s direction.
But Spain is trying something different. Its government is not treating migration as an invasion to be repelled. It is asking what the economy actually needs, what the law requires, and what basic human dignity demands. And it is trying to build something that answers all three questions at once.
Given what we are watching happen in the United States right now, I think that is worth paying attention to.
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