Lennys fled her native Venezuela a decade ago as trouble brewed during the later years of former president Hugo Chávez’s rule. Her father died at the hands of a criminal gang as a full-blown economic and political crisis loomed. She travelled to Barcelona on a tourist visa to join a friend, and never returned.

Now in her mid-forties, Lennys has lived in what migration experts call “irregular” status ever since, without official permission to stay. Once a human resources manager in her homeland, she has worked in the Catalan capital mainly as a maid, boosting her income of about