Podemos leader calls for migrant-driven overhaul of Spain's right-wing voters

Irene Montero, the political secretary of the far-left Podemos party, delivered a fiery address in which she expressed a desire for migrants and racialised people to replace Spain’s “retrograde right-wingers and racists” through voting power. She cited the Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s initiative to regularise more than 500,000 undocumented migrants as a step toward granting them citizenship or voting rights.

The comments followed a massive migration episode in which roughly 70,000 people from Morocco entered the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, straining local services. Montero later defended the newcomers, attributing the surge to a lack of legal migration routes and condemning the EU’s focus on border enforcement. Critics highlighted the contrast between her rhetoric and Sánchez’s response, which included a brief visit to Ceuta, a controversial trip to the royal palace on Lanzarote, and the deployment of riot police. The episode has intensified debate over Spain’s immigration policy and the political calculus of left-wing parties seeking new voter bases.