Spain has taken in 110,000 Ukrainian refugees to date, Pedro Sánchez reveals

AROUND 110,000 Ukrainian refugees have arrived in Spain since the conflict broke out, and 47,000 have so far been granted asylum, national president Pedro Sánchez reveals.

This week, he has visited three of the four refugee welcome centres set up to handle arrivals' immediate needs before rehousing them elsewhere in the country, depending upon resources available in different regions or, where applicable, close to family members they already have living in Spain.

Sánchez has been to the centres in Alicante, Madrid and, more recently, Barcelona, and has scheduled a visit to the hub in Málaga for the coming week.

“We're giving them all the attention they need to make them feel as though they're at home,” the president said during his tour of the Barcelona centre (shown in the above picture).

At all three he has been to so far, the president has offered his gratitude to 'all administrative bodies' involved in the process of resettling Ukrainian nationals fleeing the violence in their home country.

Although only 47,000 of the 110,000 have acquired 'special temporary protection' – which includes a three-year residence visa and work permit, possibly to be extended if the conflict continues or the arrivals feel settled in Spain and want to stay put – the State authorities are working through the list and all refugees from Ukraine will be given automatic leave to remain eventually.

Ukrainians who were already living in Spain before the invasion and did not yet have legal residence will be granted this based upon their nationality alone, or if their permit is due to expire, this will be renewed without question, given that it is unsafe for anyone originally from Ukraine to return to their home country for the foreseeable future.

Earlier this week, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy travelled to Spain and spoke during a national government Parliamentary session, during which he compared the situation in his home country to the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica in 1937, during the Civil War.

Zelenskiy has used similar analogies for different countries each time he has visited them, to give their governments an idea of what the people of Ukraine are going through.

“It doesn't feel like April 2022 – it feels like April 1937 in Guernica,” Zelenskiy told MPs.

Sánchez referred to the exiled eastern European president during his visit to the Barcelona refugee hub.

“He said something very significant: That the bombardments we're seeing in Ukraine remind him of those that happened in Guernica; all that's happening in Ukraine strikes a chord with every one of us,” Sánchez said.

“It's not just a confrontation between two neighbouring countries – it's much more than this. Putin is attacking our freedom and our way of life.”

Sánchez referred to Russian leader Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine as a 'war crime', which he said 'will not be left unpunished'.

Putin 'will pay for his crimes against humanity', Sánchez stated, recalling that Spain had agreed to join around 40 other countries in filing action against the Russian president via the international criminal court in The Hague.

Prosecutor Karim Khan, based in The Hague, said an investigation would be opened 'as soon as possible' into Russia's actions in Ukraine.

Khan said several weeks back that he is 'convinced' there are 'reasonable grounds to believe' Putin may have committed 'war crimes and crimes against humanity' in the neighbouring nation.