Spain's Former Empire Might Just Save Them || July 23, 2026

Immigration in Spain is hardly that simple. The legal immigrants from former colonies are one thing, the illegals from Arab and African states are a completely different thing. And the corrupt Marxist current government granted a massive amnesty to the latter, and it will at some point require Reconquista 2.0, or its the end of Europe as part of Western civilization.

This video did not age well 😄

With the events of the past several days, this isn't aging very well.

Canada did clamp down on immigration, largely because it had overwhelmed the availability of housing and other support services. Hot tip: You really need to front load a lot of that stuff if you want to increase your population by a million folks per year. But with the US about to evict a half-million Haitian and Syrian refugees, something tells me a lot of them are going to try heading north. It’s a big border to patrol.

Can you please!!! Get a professional windproof microphone?!?! Please, please, please!!!!!

I have an observation that hasn't yet been covered in the comments: Peter used Poland as an example of a country where being a former imperial power hasn't left it with a pool of potential immigrants, but that's not really correct. Ukraine was a subject of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth, and a large part of western Ukraine was part of the Polish Republic during 1918-1939. There have been longstanding connections between the two nations, along with periodic frictions and conflicts. It is therefore no surprise that Poland has absorbed the largest number, by far, of Ukrainian refugees over the past four years. There may be no diplomatic way of saying that many of these refugees will not want to return to Ukraine, even when it becomes safe to do so. This will be to Poland's great benefit and will be a tragic loss to Ukraine. The point being that, regardless of the current situation, Ukraine would have been a potential source of emigration to Poland. It has just be greatly accelerated since 2022. Now, don't get me going about the potential for Belarus to step into a similar role for both Poland and Lithuania...

Same language. Same religion. Similar first and last names. Some have Spanish ancestry either in whole or partial. An easier swallow for Spain.

I understand that Spain estimated that half a million illegals would benefit from the current amnesty---but about one million have applied. This is similar to the UK when we had Brexit. The government thought there were about 3.2m EU citizens at the time of whom they calculated that 1.4m would leave ( and probably did ). How many applied for residence in the UK ? 5.6m. No wonder governments are completely blind ( by choice ?) to the numbers of immigrants in Europe.

A lot of skilled labor move there because of low (25%) income tax for the first 3 yrs

It would be useful to understand the overall flow of the population groups in Spain. For example, of the 500,000 granted Spanish citizenship (and therefore EU access), how many have departed to other countries in Europe? Is Spain serving as a gateway, or is it the destination? Also, is there a Spanish Language proficiency requirement for citizenship?

What about Portugal and Brazil?

Let's face it. As a country the US has all but stopped having kids. Demographically we are doomed if we don't compensate. As we age as a country we will need a larger tax base of younger people to keep our Social Security system alive. It has to come from immigration. Just like Spain. Peter can tell you that. And language doesn't have to be a problem. Much of the world speaks English these days and those who do not will be willing to learn it at an elementary level, which is the level too many Americans stop at. But if we don't have a change in administration soon it will all be for naught. We will not be another Spain. We will be South Africa.

While I appreciate the points made today and am cool with immigration if done with balance and good stewardship, I was surprised when I visited Mallorca, Spain this April. Some local friends I had met in 2024 complained to me about higher crime in the 2 years gone. I retorted "Seriously?" but they cited a number of incidents in Madrid, Barcelona and right there in Mallorca. They said walking around at night wasn't as safe. The previous night, a person walking around near the sports resort I was staying had been attacked and robbed by three people who were reported not native Mallorcans. The young guy I was speaking to said he wanted to move to Switzerland which he felt was a much safer place to live. Just some empirical evidence and I don't know the numbers. Maybe my friend was getting a bit paranoid but he is a perfectly rational person otherwise. I hope he is wrong as I really enjoy Mallorca and Spain. PS: As pointed out by another poster, I heard some complaints about affordability but I believe that would be due to high income Europeans and UK (e.g. English and more recently Germans, etc.) who have a lot more $$$ than the average Mallorcan and by extension Spanish people).

The big question here is that how many of these illegals are actually working in Spain rather than being solely on government welfare? You only have to look at the UK to see what an awful disaster all these illegal aliens have been where they have at a minimum 100K single men who don’t work and are wholly supported by government welfare!

Spain’s huge wave of Latin American migration makes assimilation look almost effortless because those newcomers already share the language and a lot of cultural touchpoints, but the picture gets altered a bit when you look at the other two big groups: Romanians and Moroccans. Romanians generally settle in quickly — their language is a cousin of Spanish, the cultural jump isn’t huge, and EU membership makes the whole process smoother. Moroccans, on the other hand, are absolutely essential to Spain’s workforce but face a much bigger leap in language, religion, and history, so their integration naturally takes longer and feels more uneven. Together, these groups show that Spain’s open‑door approach works fastest when migrants start closer to Spain culturally, and becomes more complicated — though still workable — when they don’t.

Peter, you implied that the people moving to Spain are from the America's and not the Middle East or Africa, is that accurate?

Peter: with world oil prices spiking again, kindly weigh in on whether or not the U.S. could decouple its use of oil products from international markets. i.e. If we are oil self-sufficient, why suffer the elevated world oil prices that reflect supply constraints we don’t have? Thx.

Britain too had an empire, and we have added 10million in just over two decades - so, twice that of Spain in a smaller country. This has propped up our demographics, but England is now the most densely populated major country in Europe. We have some … problems.

I feel like the Italians could do something similar from Argentina… I know a few farmers down there who are basically ethnically Italian and they still speak Italian.

On the question of assimilation: most people complaining about immigration state:”they need to learn the language”. Well guess what? Americans aren’t very good at the language. The average SAT English test scores in Shanghai far exceed the American average in English. Take a look at middle America Kansas. The top 2% of students in Kansas take the SAT. The state average score is higher than most states. 50% of the test score is English vocabulary and reading comprehension. The average SAT scores in English for Kansas students? 518. The average SAT English scores for Shanghai students? 680. If you want to promote English in the U.S. we better bring as many Shanghai kids as possible.

It appears that the same is true, to even a larger degree with Portugal!

The reality is that the urban rural divide is crazy in all first world countries, and most of the second world. Urban areas have huge labor demands, so they suck young people in and put them to work. But the success of the city is also the downfall, because once the huge rural reserve army of labor is gone, there is no policy to get to stable replacement populations. The failure is in the state not providing social resources to promote young people into family formation through real child care and child education subsidies. For instance, most of the modern societies were built on the agricultural conversion sending cheap labor to the cities. Now that this is over throughout the aging modern world, real socialism is now necessary for cities to sustain. Growth without immigration from those reserves of cheap labor really won't exist, without a real policy to either import them or create them.

Let's remember that Portuguese-speakers are equal in number to Spanish-speakers in South America. Almost all live in one nation, but Brazil is a very big nation. Can you compare Brazil's relationship to Portugal with their neighbors on both sides of the Atlantic? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_America#Language

Hmmm. I guess you could say the same thing about France with Africa or England with most of the world. What would make Spain unique in its relationship to its former empire? Is there a unique cultural homogeneity across latin/Hispanic cultures that you don't find in other situations?

Latin American Latinos are culturally not Spanish. Spaniards are Europeans with a European mentality. Latin Americans may speak Spanish but they are culturally Americans. Witness the rash of conservative election winners.

What Spain have in South America, cannot be easily replicated by other countries. A pool of inmigration potential with the same language and a highly compatible culture. There are many families mixed, both Spanish and Southamerica, for a long time. Another curious thing is the influx of Chinese inmigration, which surprisingly integrate quite well in Spain.

What does the future of Gibraltar look like then? If Spain looks better positioned for the future and as the UK looses more and more of its significance everyday, is a change of ownership inevitable? I would also look at the future of Falkland Islands through the same lens, with a rising Argentina which even displayed Falkland island posters when they beat the British soccer team 😃

Immigration has been a huge benefit to keep the U.S. on top and helped the U.S. avoid the demographic trap. On the low end, we get young adult labor that has babies and spends money/consumes. On the top end, highly educated, we have been like the NFL team that gets every pick in the first three rounds of the draft. Oh yea, and the low end laborers, their kids are educated here and some percentage of those kids become scientists and innovators etc. If we can only get over the fear of people being different (see Italians and Irish in the past) we can continue to stay on top.

Long live the empire! https://youtu.be/v2VDEH0igHQ?si=ggWeqngTAW2-G8x-

As a US ex-pat living in Spain I’d like to point out a something: Like Canada, Spain is suffering thru a major housing shortage in its major cities which naturally has become a housing affordability crisis. Enough so, that it will probably bring down the current pro-immigration government when it goes into elections next year. There are millions of abandoned homes in the rapidly depopulated interior (rural) Spain, but no one wants to live there.