Everyone wanted to speak to him about the same thing; a town council motion, approved unanimously and across party lines, calling on the central government to push forward with a stalled proposal to regularise undocumented migrants in Spain.

“To us, it was the most natural thing in the world,” explained Núñez Pérez, as he paused to greet residents in the town’s central plaza. In recent decades, migrants from across the globe had been atrracted to Villamalea for the many jobs on offer