Circular migration in Spain: good practice?

Several international organisations have considered Spain’s circular migration programme (known as “Collective Management of Recruitment at Origin”, in Spanish ‘Gestión Colectiva de las contrataciones en Origen’ or GECCO) to be an example of good practice (López-Sala, 2016). So did the European Commission, which took the “Spanish model” as the basis for drawing up the EU’s directive on seasonal workers (Directive 2014/36/EU). With that in mind, it funded the Aeneas-Cartaya project (2006) to test its operation with the hiring of Moroccan farm labourers to work in the strawberry fields of Huelva. Whether the GECCO programme constitutes good practice to be replicated in other contexts remains an open question, however. Over the last few years, media outlets and academic researchers have reported numerous cases of abuse and mistreatment of women migrant workers in Huelva. This policy brief aims to answer the question by drawing on a debate held in September 2025 at a seminar on the GECCO programme organised by Universidad de Comillas and CIDOB for the European projects DigntfyFIRM and Safehabitus. The main stakeholders took part, from employers’ organisations and trade unions to third sector bodies, Spain’s labour inspectorate, the Spanish Embassy in Morocco and academic researchers. The brief first describes the programme’s characteristics and how it has evolved over time. Second, it examines its strengths and weaknesses. And third, it ends with a series of specific recommendations to improve it.