A family of Leonese origin and another from Granada, who fled the persecution of the Ortega dictatorship in Nicaragua, are already rebuilding their lives in the municipality of Tudela, in the north of Spain. all of them They arrived on November 6, 2025 in Spanish territory coming from Costa Rica, where refugees lived.
Henry Blanco, his wife Karla Gámez and their three children, ages 14, nine and three, are from Leon. Adriana Soza and her husband Sandy Aguilar, plus their children of ten, five, three years old and another 9 months old, are from Granada.
Henry Blanco was an announcer on Radio Darío, in León, when the attacks against the station —and independent journalism in general—made him understand that he had to follow the path of exile to preserve his life, according to an interview which reproduced the Media Diversity Observatory, a project of the Basque NGO SOS Racism Gipuzkoa.
At the beginning of 2019, the man from Leon settled in Costa Rica, but nostalgia made him return to Nicaragua in December 2020, with the intention of ringing in the new year in the company of his mother, but he was detained by the regime’s police. As reported CONFIDENTIAL —and other media outlets—Henry was released a few hours later. As soon as he could, he returned to his Costa Rican exile, leaving his wife Karla and his children at home with the promise that they would be reunited. In Nicaragua, or in Costa Rica, and it was in Costa Rica.
Adriana and Sandy have been married for more than a decade. In an interview with the Diario Noticias de Navarrashe related that in Granada they had businesses and comforts. The same ones they had to give up when they began to suffer harassment from fanatics of the regime for being opponents of the dictatorship.
“We experienced direct persecution. We were stalked in our businesses. The Police seized many of our assets,” said Adriana. “We were very prosperous and leaving all that behind was a very hard blow for us and our children,” he added.
Institutional and community support
Since November 2025, both families have resided in Tudela, a city of about 39,000 inhabitants, in the community of Navarra. Aware of their slow population growth, local authorities implement initiatives that support migrants from various parts of the world. Like the Blanco Gámez and the Aguilar Soza.
They settled there thanks to the Community Sponsorship Agreement, after traveling the route San José, Costa Rica – Madrid, Spain. They did this trip with the support of the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
The former speaker said that he expected them to be assigned a room in a shelter, but his surprise was great when he saw that not only did they have a floor to settle in, but also very close support.
This support comes from volunteers, as well as from institutions such as the Lasa Centeran entity that belongs to the social work of the Society of Jesus. Both volunteers and those who work at this Catholic organization support refugees so they can rebuild their lives. They help them adapt to local culture and tradition, in addition to providing advice on practical issues and opportunities for social connection.
A publication from the Tudela City Council He explained that UNHCR is in charge of monitoring the families. It selects the beneficiaries of the program, which has the support and financing of the Department of Migration Policies of the Government of Navarra.
Program volunteers and staff will be with these families for a period of 18 to 24 months. During this period, they help them integrate into local life, which includes obtaining job training and entering productive life.
This is the second edition of the Community Sponsorship program that is executed through the Lasa Center, which had previously hosted several Syrian families. The Padre Lasa Center was founded in 2008, within the framework of the Jesuit Migrant Service in Spain. It is characterized by including a community intervention component “to manage migration from a psychosocial approach”, according to your own definition.
More than 1,403 refugees in Spain
From 2023, Spain has received some 1,403 Nicaraguans. Its arrival has been distributed as follows:
- 2026: 48
- 2025: 425
- 2024: 665
- 2023: 265
In 2025, a total of 817 people arrived in Spain within the Program – according to official Spanish information -, 52% were Nicaraguans and 44.5% were nationals of Syria.
The families of Henry Blanco and Adriana Soza are part of the 245 Nicaraguan refugees who arrived from Costa Rica, in the operation considered “the largest” within the Spanish National Resettlement Plan.
Nicaraguans have become one of the most benefited groups in this program, due to the high number of people who have left Nicaragua after the sociopolitical crisis that began in 2018.
