The EU Free Movement of Persons from a Spanish Perspective: Exploring its Evolution and Derogations

Although Spain is often discussed in migration studies, both for its special characteristics and for its representativeness of a larger group of European countries, the free movement of European Union (EU) citizens across Spanish borders and within Spain is a matter so far insufficiently explored in legal literature. Spain has been a member of the EU for more than twenty-five years, however, the assessment of the implementation by Spanish authorities of EU law in this field has remained mostly limited to fairly descriptive analyses of the applicable statutory framework. This article goes beyond that and looks critically into the evolution of this statutory framework and, above all, its judicial application. Besides analysing the Spanish legal framework applicable to the free movement of EU citizens and their family members, this article explores a range of obstacles to that free movement. It concentrates particularly on the most striking obstacle to free movement - exclucsion orders - by exploring in detail the rules and case law (mainly produced by the Spanish Supreme Court) that have dealt with the possibility of expulsion of EU citizens and their family members.