{UAH} More than 1,500 migrants pour through Europe's new gateway on Spanish beaches
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Costa del Crisis: Running on to Spanish beaches where Brits bask on holiday, these are just some of the 1,500 migrants who've poured through Europe's new gateway in just one week
- So far in 2018 23,000 migrants have arrived in Spain hoping to make a new life
- More than 1,500 have landed close to Algeciras on the Spanish coast in a week
- The migrants from Africa are taking off from Morocco and paid £1,300 each
The promenade lined with palm trees overlooking Campamento port is where Spanish families enjoy a stroll in the cool of evening. They can gaze across the sea at the Rock of Gibraltar and the street lights of Morocco 13 miles away.
Above them is the white-walled town of San Roque, where 5,000 Spanish sought sanctuary after Anglo-Dutch forces seized control of Gibraltar in 1704. They fled carrying priceless relics: church records and statuettes dating back to the early 16th century, which are on show to tourists visiting this quiet corner of the Costa Del Sol.
Yet the pace of life is changing fast here. This week at Campamento, not far from the coastal city of Algeciras, a giant camp with orange tents and wood cabins was being given its finishing touches. It is a new reception centre for the thousands of illegal migrants who have sailed from Morocco to Spain on perilous journeys in rickety boats.
The camp has come as a complete surprise to many Spanish people. One young man on the prom, watching the tents and cabins being filled with army-style beds, whispered to me: 'This looks like Guantanamo Bay.'
Another resident, a slim lady in her 50s, shook her head. 'We want to help these people, but hope they won't stay long.'
Moroccan migrants disembark from a dinghy at 'Del Canuelo' beach after they crossed the Strait of Gibraltar sailing from the coast of Morocco
A third, writing on a popular local website, wrote sarcastically: 'A new camp like Calais in France…congratulations!'
Spain is now the top destination for illegal migrants reaching Europe by sea. So far this year there have been 23,000 arrivals, almost four times more than at the same point last summer, according to the United Nations refugee agency.
And the numbers reaching Spain grow daily. Sailings far outstrip those on the once-favoured route from Libya to Italy, which have fallen by 80 per cent since the interior minister of Italy's Right-wing government ordered a virtual halt to migrant boats entering Italian ports earlier this year.
More than 1,500 people have landed along the Spanish coast close to Algeciras since last Friday. In one amazing episode, dozens of migrants were filmed arriving on a beach by boat and racing up the sand a few miles south of the seaside city as shocked sunbathers — some of them naturists — looked on.
Earlier this week, there were so few places for migrants to sleep in Algeciras that many lay wrapped in charity blankets or flattened cardboard boxes on the pavement. Pictures of their plight were beamed around the world as the mayor begged for help.
Jose Ignacio Landaluce said his city had become the 'new Lampedusa' in a reference to an Italian island south of Sicily which has been transformed from a holiday paradise by thousands of illegal migrants who live there in refugee camps after arriving by boat from North Africa.
He pleaded: 'I hope the EU is working on a global policy on this: it may be our [Spanish] problem now, but tomorrow, or in a week's time or a month's, it will be at the heart of Europe.'
His words ring true. For as I discovered this week in Algeciras, few of the new arrivals speak any Spanish, and they will find it hard to cope with life or find a job. They may simply use Spain as a stepping stone to travel north into France; already some have arrived and then simply disappeared.
Most of them hail from the French-speaking countries of West Africa — Guinea, Mali, Niger, Cameroon and Chad. And the fact that Spain has high unemployment, with one young person in three out of work, means finding a job in the country will be a struggle at best.
All this does not bode well, for it is when large numbers of young men find themselves at a loose end for weeks that social problems can unfold.
Members of the NGO talking to rescued migrants aboard the French NGO's ship Aquarius, in the search and rescue zone in the Mediterranean sea.
The arriving migrants have been put in temporary accommodation: police stations, hostels and sports centres, where — as officials and charity workers struggle to cope — each one is given a bed, regular meals, free medical care and a foreigner's certificate allowing them to travel freely inside the country.
Needless to say, in the faraway tea-houses of impoverished West and North Africa, news of such largesse has got round fast. Spanish police this week estimated that 50,000 migrants from that part of the Third World now wait in Morocco, hoping to sail to Spain.
They are helped by people-trafficking gangs — often run by Moroccans — which charge migrants £1,300 each for a place on a small boat, or sell a group of them a rubber dinghy with paddles for an extortionate £500.
Migrants are seen on a dinghy as they cross the Strait of Gibraltar sailing from the coast of Morocco
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They are pushed off by the traffickers at night, in flotillas, from beaches along a 250-mile stretch of the Moroccan coast between the cities of Tangier and Nador. It is risky for the migrants, and hundreds have drowned already this year.
However, refugee charities in Morocco regularly tip off the Spanish coastguards when a flotilla is about to sail. This means there is a rescue boat waiting in international waters (12 miles off the coast) to take the migrants on board and bring them safely into a Spanish port.
Under controversial EU rules, Spain, as a nearby country, also has a duty to help any vessel leaving Morocco that sounds a distress SOS signal. Migrants even send directions on social media via their mobile phones to alert the coastguards to their exact location at sea.
Captain Miguel Parcha, skipper of a coastguard vessel operating on the Costa Del Sol, told me: 'The migrants know we will rescue them when they set off. That is a fact. We do our work because otherwise they will die.'
The crisis in Spain has been heightened by events in May when a French-run charity vessel, Aquarius, was prevented by the new Italian government from bringing 630 migrants ashore, amid accusations that such foreign-flagged ships were acting as a taxi service for migrants and helped fuel the wicked trade of the traffickers.
Migrants entering Spain from Morocco are sent to the migration camps where they are registered
The orange tents are set up to house those who arrive in Spain as migrants. Many hope to gain asylum status
Next, Malta also refused to take the migrants. But Spain's new Left-wing government stepped into the breach and welcomed the ship as an act of humanity.
It arrived in the port of Valencia four days later, while politicians in Madrid told European leaders to stop playing 'ostrich' politics over the huge issue of illegal arrivals in Europe.
This week, Spain had not changed its tune. Josep Borrell, the foreign minister, denied the country was experiencing 'mass' immigration and said Europe needed 'new blood' to compensate for a low birth rate.
The Government is aiming to invest £26 million in an emergency plan for migrants, to reflect the fact that Spain is now the main destination for newcomers from Africa.
All this was good news for the migrants I met in Algeciras sitting outside the Casa Blanca cafe, near the port, before they took a walk on the city's beach.
The four, from Guinea, arrived in the tourist resort of Malaga, an hour's drive away, on the afternoon of Sunday, July 22, in a coastguard boat. They had been rescued from a flotilla of small craft that had set sail the night before from a beach in Nador, Morocco.
Once in Spain, they were driven by coach to Algeciras, where they were given a room each in the Pension Zagora in a narrow side street, paid for by the Spanish government.
Every day they can have three meals — also free — at the Casa Blanca cafe. Meanwhile, each has been given a registration document by the local social security office, certifying their arrival in Spain, their name, nationality and date of birth. It means they can travel anywhere in Spain while their rights to asylum are assessed.
It seems likely that Souleymane Diop, one of the quartet, will be lucky. The 20-year-old is a handsome boy with a wide smile and pearly teeth, dressed in a white charity T-shirt given to him by the Spanish Red Cross.
He says he is gay, which means he has a good chance of claiming asylum in Spain under EU human rights laws.
His claims his sexuality is why he left the home of his mother, a nurse, in Conakry, Guinea. 'They don't like men like me in my country. They kill us,' he says simply. 'My life was in danger and my family's, too. I have no father that I know of, so I could not do that to my mother.'
Souleymane was in a small rubber boat for hours before he was rescued by the Spanish coastguard. It was another four hours before he reached Spain. 'I had been in Morocco for months waiting to get on a boat,' he explains. 'I had travelled from Guinea through Mali, Algeria and Morocco.
Migrants Chief Souare, Souleymare Diop,Mohammed Keita, and Karim Kourama all from Guinea in West Africa
From Morocco to Spain: This is the inside of the camps the migrants are sent to when they arrive - if they are caught
'I was so relieved to arrive. Now, I want to stay in Spain because I am good at languages. I want to work in IT and get a training. The days are long here, but I am grateful to this country.'
Souleymane is agnostic, unlike his Muslim friends Karim Kourama, 19, Souare Hadre, 25, and Mohammed Keita, 20. They spend their time playing on their mobile phones and sleeping. 'We can tell you where the best beach is,' laughs Souleymane.
He met Karim on the coastguard boat, and the two chatter together about what the future holds. Karim wants to go to England, where his uncle, Matiti Camara, has been living for eight years, working as a translator in Sunderland. Matiti arrived in Britain legally with a work visa, then returned to impoverished Guinea, where he married Marie and brought her back to live in the North-East, where they have four children.
Karim, the son of a police officer, shows me pictures of Marie on Facebook and photos of three of the children on what he says was a trip to London.
'I hope Spain will let me go to England. I hope England will have me,' he says, with Souleymane translating. 'I know it is cold there, but I have family so that is a start.'
Of course, these young men are full of dreams. They are still very excited to get to Europe. They seem to have no inkling that there are many thousands like them with few qualifications and language problems who are already in Spain, with the same high hopes but a precarious future.
Back at the newly built camp at Campamento port, a police officer showed me round, pointing out the bunk beds where 600 newly arrived migrants will sleep.
'The first will be here by coach tonight or tomorrow,' he tells me. 'They will have a medical check first. We will also do DNA tests to make sure families are really families, and that there are no children or women being trafficked among them.
'Those who claim to be children but look like adults will have tests on their bones to see if they are telling the truth. Only after several days will the migrants whose checks are clear be allowed to leave here to begin their life in Spain.'
It all sounds fine on paper. But what has this liberal country taken on?
The other day, the new leader of Spain's conservative opposition Popular Party, Pablo Casado, said the Left-wing government must change direction over its open-door policy, otherwise 'millions' more would arrive from Africa.
(l to r) Mohammed Keita, Souleymare Diop , Chief Souare,and Karim Kourama in Spain where they hope to remain
He said it was not possible for every migrant to be allowed to live in Spain. 'Nor is it sustainable that a welfare state can absorb millions who want to come to Europe. We have to say it, even though it is politically incorrect.'
Yet his words are unlikely to be heeded by those who hold political sway in Spain. And the same goes for the concerns of ordinary Spaniards who fear trouble ahead.
On a local internet discussion forum discussing the influx to Algeciras, one man calling himself Miguel wrote this week: 'The other day I went to Tangier, where, near the central bullring, there are thousands and thousands of people waiting to be able to ride a boat [to Spain]. They even know they will be rescued by Spain and will then be Europeans.
'Madness. This is only the beginning. It has to end.'
This week it was clear that many here in Spain believe the same.
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