Reported rapes have almost doubled in Spain since pro-mass immigration leftist Pedro Sanchez became Prime Minister, official crime statistics show.
Mr Sanchez, who earlier this year launched a mass amnesty program for illegal immigrants that resulted in 1.2 million applications for residency, has been in office since June 2018, and last year declared that Spain was “almost the safest country in the world”.
But annual figures from the Ministry of Interior show that reported rapes increased 96% between 2018 and 2025, and the number of cases recorded by police in the first half of 2026 was 3.5% higher than in the same period last year, according to quarterly data released in September.
During the seven-year period murders increased 31%, and attempted murders increased 78%, with the proportion of murders to attempted murders growing from one to fewer than three, to one to almost four.
According to an analysis by Brussels Signal, the sharper rise in attempted murders may be a more accurate reflection of increased violence in Spain, due to fewer victims dying as a result of advances in emergency medicine and trauma care.
Some Spanish media outlets have reported that rapes almost tripled since 2018, based on 1,700 sexual assaults with penetration being recorded in 2018 compared to 5,363 in 2025.
But those figures leave out 1,044 cases of sexual abuse with penetration from 2018, which were categorised before Mr Sanchez controversially changed the law to remove the distinction between sexual abuse and sexual assault.
The law was amended again in 2023 after hundreds of sex offenders had their sentences reduced by the courts, and Mr Sanchez was forced to apologise to their victims.
The Ministry of the Interior has claimed the rise in sex offences is due to awareness campaigns, which it says have made victims more likely to come forward and reduced under-reporting.
Multiple rapes, including of young girls and boys, were reported in the Spanish territory of Ceuta on the northern tip of Morocco after almost 100,000 illegal immigrants breached the border in late July.
A female illegal immigrant from Morocco told Reuters in August that the situation was “really bad” in the makeshift camp she and other women were living in.
Spanish police said there were 15 sexual assaults in the three weeks after the invasion, and that most of the victims were underage.
Header image: Left, Pedro Sanchez (Facebook). Right, illegal immigrants fill the streets of Ceuta at night (X).
