Meetings, subsidies and reproaches to the State: Manuel Pavón's year at Immigration

PalmaManuel Pavón was appointed Director General of Immigration and Development on July 15, 2025, a position with an inherent paradox, because it is the State that decides on borders, expulsions, residence permits, and regularizations. Pavón's scope of action focuses on managing what happens afterwards: integration, reception, services, and coordination with organizations. Thus: what has this Government Directorate General done for almost a year and three months? Sources from the Ministry of the Presidency, on which Pavón depends, reduce his time of action: during the second half of 2025, no concrete initiatives can be detailed because Pavón entered in July and began meeting with third-sector entities, consulates, and foundations. That is to say, the first months in the position could be considered as a period of making contact. The same sources recall that last summer there was "the largest wave of small boats until then." But the management of borders and irregular arrivals is not the responsibility of this Directorate General.

Regarding 2026, the Ministry highlights the strengthening of the Immigration Service staff, which has allowed for updating pending files; the increase in resources allocated to third-sector entities, from 300,000 to 617,000 euros; meetings with social entities and migrant associations; the presentation of the strategic lines for 2026-2027, and the demands to the Spanish government to provide a forceful and coordinated response to the situation generated by the migratory route between Algeria and the Balearic Islands.

"Almost 40 meetings" without public record

According to information from the Government's Transparency Portal, the Director General of Immigration earns 71,411.48 euros annually, excluding supplements such as triennial increments, with functions that go beyond the tasks performed until now: "Social and economic cooperation of an external nature"; "solidarity and human development policies for undeveloped or developing peoples and countries"; "attention to the migrant population"; "support for the social and labor integration of immigrants"; and "relations with communities and associative entities of foreign residents". Regarding meetings with migrant entities, the Director General noted that, upon taking office, he had held "nearly 40 meetings," without detailing any of them.

In fact, there is no public list of these meetings. There is evidence of a meeting with the Majorcan and Menorcan Cooperation Funds in November 2025; meetings of the Advisory Council for Integration in December 2025 and April 2026; and a meeting with Caritas Diocesana of Mallorca, the Spanish Red Cross, Pharmacists Without Borders, and Doctors of the World in August 2026 to present aid and actions regarding the earthquake in Venezuela, not for any reason related to immigration in the Balearic Islands. There are also records of two visits to a water park in Mallorca with Sahrawi children from the Holidays in Peace program.

Regarding the 2026-2027 strategic lines that Pavón presented on April 14, the summary is as follows:

• Reception and regularization: greater coordination between administrations and information exchange to improve the response from the moment of arrival.
• Cultural and linguistic integration: training in Catalan and Spanish, coexistence and knowledge of the social and institutional environment.
• Education and sport: promoting inclusion, preventing school dropout and fostering social cohesion.
• Work and entrepreneurship: career guidance, training and support for self-employment to foster economic autonomy.
• Health: facilitate access to the healthcare system and adapt care to diversity; update the protocol on female genital mutilation.
• Housing and coexistence: preventing residential vulnerability and fostering respect for coexistence rules.
• Equality and anti-discrimination: protection protocols, victim support and campaigns, with special attention to gender-based violence and human trafficking.
• Participation and associationism: encouraging migrant people to participate actively in social life.
• Childhood and adolescence: coordination protocols for reception and guardianship, with special attention to unaccompanied migrant minors.

Since then, there has been no record of the deployment of specific measures regarding this issue. In fact, the director general did not even participate in the Sectoral Conference on Immigration on July 23rd. It was not just him; all the communities governed by the PP did the same. What the Government has done since then is to file appeals against the increase in the capacity to host minors in the Islands decreed by the State and against the transfer of a migrant minor to the Balearics. The Executive has also filed an appeal before the Supreme Court against the distribution of minors among autonomous communities by the State. Pavón has focused his activity on the arrival of irregular immigration, minors, and the conflict with the State and not on the execution of integration policies that do indeed form part of his competencies.