Castilla y León challenges two Spanish government immigration decrees in court

Minors quota decree challenged

The Junta de Castilla y León announced on Sunday that it will appeal Real Decreto 556/2026, approved on 30 June, which sets the ordinary capacity of the protection system for unaccompanied foreign minors. The decree assigns the region a capacity of 833 minors, up from 783 in a previous decree of August 2025 that is also under appeal.

The Government of Spain is once again acting unilaterally, without the unanimous agreement of all the communities and without respecting the competences that correspond to each community in matters of child protection.

The regional executive argues that the capacity is fixed according to political criteria rather than the real reception capacity of each territory, making adequate resource planning difficult and compromising the sustainability of the protection system.

Disproportionate increase

The Junta highlights that while the population of Castilla y León grew by only 0.72% between August 2025 and May 2026, the number of assigned minors increased by 6.38%, from 783 to 833. This, it says, demonstrates a lack of proportionality in the criteria applied by the central government and a disregard for the region’s reality.

The legal services of the autonomous administration, at the request of the Department of Deregulation, Family and Social Aid headed by Vice President Carlos Pollán, will file the appeal in the coming days.

Regularization decree admitted by Supreme Court

Separately, the Supreme Court has admitted an appeal filed by Castilla y León against the government’s immigrant regularization decree. The regional government questions the unprecedented scale of the process, the relaxation of accreditation requirements, and the lack of participation of autonomous communities.

There are solid and sufficiently grounded legal reasons to question the legality of this Royal Decree, whose dimension and content fully justify the filing of the appeal by the Junta de Castilla y León.

Scale and compatibility concerns

The Junta notes that the government’s initial estimate of potential beneficiaries was around 500,000 people, but more recent estimates put the figure at approximately 1,100,000, without any analysis of the effects. The appeal also argues that the decree does not require proof of effective residence and roots, nor effective work activity in Spain, altering the principles that had inspired such procedures.

Finally, the regional government considers the decree incompatible with the framework of commitments assumed by EU member states on migration control.