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Spanish migration waves to France became a massive phenomenon between the late 1950s and the first half of the 1970s. The presence in France of a large colony of political exiles and democratic trade unions raises the fears of the agents of the Franco dictatorship, who ensure to monitor and control the new arrivals, unemployed and young precarious workers –both men and women– for most of them. This article focuses on the dynamics of politicization and of social and professional mobilization implemented by these so-called economic migrants through their interactions with the French trade union world, especially with the CGT and the CFDT.