Spain plans to make it easier for newcomers to settle, the prime minister said, promoting migration as an effective way to protect prosperity in sharp contrast with the attitude of much of Europe.

“Spain needs to choose between being an open and prosperous country or a closed-off, poor country,” Pedro Sánchez told parliament on Wednesday. “It’s as simple as that.”

He said migration was not just a question of humanity, but the only realistic means of growing the economy and sustaining the welfare state in a country where the birthrate was among the lowest in the EU.

“Throughout history, migration has been one of the great drivers of the development of nations while hatred and xenophobia have been – and continue to be – the greatest destroyer of nations,” he said. “The key is in managing it well.”

His remarks come as governments across Europe responded to the surge of the far right by cracking down on migration. Last month Germany reintroduced checks at its land borders, saying it was necessary to “protect against the acute dangers posed by Islamist terrorism and serious crime”, while France’s prime minister, Michel Barnier, said recently that immigration levels were “often insufferable”.

Sweden and Finland have all announced plans to bring in new anti-immigration measures, while Italy has been accused of turning a blind eye to human rights as it hashes out deals with leaders in Libya and Tunisia to curtail arrivals.

The hardening sentiment has at times pitted governments against busnesses eager to grow: in March the largest company in the Netherlands voiced concerns that the country’s anti-immigration stance would impede its ability to attract skilled labour. Similar concerns have been voiced in Germany.

On Wednesday, Sánchez said Spain would set out on a different path, instead setting aside resources to better integrate migrants into the labour market and to reduce red tape for residency applications.

“Almost half of our municipalities are at risk of depopulation,” he said. “We have elderly people who need a caregiver and can’t find one. Companies that are looking for programmers, technicians, bricklayers and cannot find them. Rural schools that need children so that they don’t have to close their doors.”

In May, the OECD cited Spain, the fastest growing economy in the EU, as an example of how high rates of migration were helping to bolster economic growth by plugging gaps in the labour market.

Even so, the far right and, increasingly, the conservative People’s party, have sought to stoke fears around migration by linking immigrants to crime. Two recent polls suggest their efforts are having an impact, as respondents hinted at hardening attitudes towards migrants.

Sánchez, speaking to parliament, thanked the people of the Canary Islands for providing a “daily example of humanity” as the number of arrivals along one of the world’s deadliest migration routes increased to more than 30,000.

The number of asylum seekers, many of them fleeing conflict and political instability, was reminiscent of the 120,000 Spaniards who made their own desperate journeys in rickety boats decades earlier, Sánchez said. “More than two million Spaniards emigrated during the Franco era, half of them irregularly,” he said. “We have to remember the odysseys of our mothers and fathers, our grandfathers and grandmothers in Latin America, in the Caribbean and Europe. And understand that our duty now, especially now, is to be that welcoming, tolerant, supportive society that they would have liked to find.”

It was a “moral debt” that the country owed to its older people, and one that now needed to be paid to provide prosperity for future generations. “We Spaniards are children of emigration,” he said. “We are not going to be the parents of xenophobia.”

Sánchez urged Spaniards to reject stereotypes and hoaxes about migration. In the past decade, 94% of migrants who had arrived in Spain had done so legally, he said. About 40% of them were Latin Americans, 30% hailed from other parts of Europe and 20% were from Africa. “We’re talking about a diverse migration flow that looks nothing like the image [perpetuated by] the far right.”

Migrants were more likely to be working than people born in Spain, and less likely to access social services, he said. When age and income levels are taken into account, the rates of delinquency were about the same for both groups, he added.

“I want citizens to understand that this is not a battle between Spaniards and foreigners, or Christians and Muslims or saints and criminals,” he said. “It is a battle between truth and lies, between tales and data, between what is in the interests of our society and the interests of a few who see fear and hatred of foreigners as their only path to power.”

In recent years, Sánchez’s government been criticised for externalising migration control to Morocco, which NGOs say contributed to the deaths of at least 37 people who were attempting to cross the border fence at Spain’s north African enclave of Melilla in 2022. At the time, Sánchez blamed the deaths on “mafias that traffic in human beings”. He returned to the theme in August, arguing that to combat these mafias, it was “necessary to return those who had arrived in Spain irregularly”.

His stance appears to have shifted since then, although he said on Wednesday he would ask the European Commission to advance the implementation of its recently approved pact on migration – widely criticised by rights groups who say it will increase suffering – in order to better share the distribution of migrants and asylum seekers.