Ariadne, Calala Fondo de Mujeres, Migration Exchange and Safe Passage Fund are pleased to announce the launch of our joint briefing: When Movements Win – Lessons from Spain’s Regularisation Movement for Human Rights Funders.
Across Europe and the US, anti-rights political movements are gaining ground, with migration often serving as a testing ground for wider attacks on human rights. How states treat migrants is increasingly a test of whose rights are recognised and whose are made conditional. Where rights are curtailed for one group, the broader principle of universality is weakened for all.
But this is also why it is important to learn from where movements are succeeding. In the face of an increasingly coordinated anti-rights agenda, funders need to both understand the threats, and learn from the movements building power and winning transformative change.
This is why, Ariadne, Calala Fondo de Mujeres, Migration Exchange and Safe Passage Fund came together to produce this insight paper. Regularización Ya! (Regularisation Now!) offers a powerful example of a migrant-led, grassroots movement securing change at national scale: helping to achieve a mass regularisation process in Spain that received 1,174,978 applications. Building on our joint webinar in June 2026 that brought together over 50 philanthropic actors, this briefing distils some of the key insights from that conversation, while situating the victory within its wider political and funding context, which has rapidly evolved since we met in June.
Movements can still win, even in a hostile political climate. Regularización Ya! shows it’s possible – and offers concrete lessons on how.
The briefing is not intended as a definitive account of the campaign or as a blueprint for replication. Rather, it asks what funders can learn from a movement that succeeded in building collective power over time and what those lessons might mean for funding strategies at a moment when the defence of rights requires stronger connections across movements, issues and geographies.
The takeaway for funders: movements need trust and flexible, long-term support long before a win is guaranteed – not only once they’ve already proven themselves.
A note on the rapidly changing political context in Spain
While the webinar took place on 2 June 2026, the application period for the extraordinary regularisation process closed on 30 June, with almost 1.2 million applications submitted, far exceeding expectations.
The migration context in Spain has shifted dramatically since June. In late July, Spain also faced an unprecedented migration crisis in Ceuta, where around 72,000 people crossed into the Spanish enclave from Morocco and many people tragically lost their lives during the crossings. The number of people crossing was unprecedented, but crossings and deaths at the border are not a new phenomenon. The crisis was rapidly exploited by far-right actors and media to amplify anti-migrant narratives across Europe and the UK.
Since then, the eviction of 87-year-old Maricarmen Abscal in Madrid has ignited mass protests calling for greater protections for tenants across the country. The government’s failure to pass emergency housing legislation on Friday has led to Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez calling a snap general election for November.
This intersection makes the lessons of Regularización Ya!’s movement even more urgent: Spain’s experience is an important reminder of why movements capable of building public support for rights-based approaches remain so vital, in Spain and far beyond it.
Click here to download the briefing!