As they announced a few weeks ago, Junts per Catalunya has once again submitted this Wednesday in Congress the bill to delegate immigration-related powers to the Generalitat that it agreed with the PSOE last year and that was rejected in September 2025 by the votes of the PP, Vox, Podemos, and two Sumar deputies. The post-convergent party thus recovers an initiative they consider a current commitment with the socialists and do so amid the migration crisis in Ceuta, while maintaining their rejection that Catalunya must host minors who have recently arrived in the autonomous city.
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According to the spokesperson of JxCat in Congress, Miriam Nogueras, this bill is “more necessary” because what happened in Ceuta “shows that the Government is not capable of controlling its borders” and that it “goes in the opposite direction to the rest of the European Union governments” by promoting a “massive extraordinary regularization unilaterally.” Therefore, she believes that Catalunya must be able to “decide, control, manage, and prevent” migratory flows.
The main novelty compared to the previous text is in the preamble. Junts has presented a bill practically identical in content but has replaced the statement of reasons that caused Podemos’s rejection with a much shorter one focused on the legal basis of the initiative. “The part they said bothered them is no longer there,” explained the Junts spokesperson in Congress, Miriam Nogueras, on Catalunya Ràdio. In another interview on 3Cat Info, she was even more precise: “The legislative text, the law, is exactly the same.”
Once the Preamble was changed, Junts considers that Podemos “no longer has excuses not to vote in favor of Catalunya having the tools and resources” in migration matters
Thus, Nogueras considers that Podemos “no longer has excuses not to vote in favor of Catalunya having the tools and resources” in migration matters. It is worth recalling that the previous text referred to immigration as a “risk to social cohesion,” a part that now disappears. The post-convergent deputy recalled that Podemos justified its vote against at the time, besides the content of the preamble, because, according to her, they had been asked to do so by “ERC leaders.” Junts now intends that Belarra’s party finds “no excuse” to vote against again. “They no longer have excuses not to vote in favor of Catalunya having the necessary tools and resources” to manage immigration, she maintained.
At the same time, the JxCat vice president also denied having discussed this issue with the socialists. At the time, they jointly submitted the law, but now Junts has done so on its own. Miriam Nogueras maintains that “there is nothing to discuss” because it was a PSOE commitment and something that “was already agreed.” Therefore, she does not doubt that the socialist party will maintain its favorable vote.
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The bill proposes that the Generalitat manage the returns of migrants who are prohibited from entering, which would imply that the Mossos d’Esquadra would collaborate alongside the National Police and the Civil Guard in border control, also at ports and airports. On the other hand, it includes that the Generalitat administration becomes the single window to authorize long-term stays, temporary residencies, and the issuance of foreigner identity numbers (NIE), as well as the transfer of management of the CIEs.
Additionally, the Generalitat could instruct and execute the returns of migrants in cases where expulsion can be carried out without a procedure, while in cases where such a procedure must be carried out, Catalunya can make the expulsion proposal. Therefore, it is a delegation of powers, not a transfer, because there are matters that are the exclusive domain of the State.
According to Miriam Nogueras, the Government is “going in the opposite direction of Europe.” The post-convergent has defended that the EU has assumed it is necessary to “guarantee the integration of people who want to settle and who adopt the values and norms of the society they arrive in; and that expulsion rules can be executed with maximum diligence.” This contrasts with a State that “has endangered the Schengen area” and, from this perspective, Catalunya “cannot be without the powers and control in immigration for one more minute.”
