In the last decade, more than 30,000 people have died or disappeared in the Mediterranean while trying to reach Europe. Behind each number, there is a life, a story, and an identity. This report addresses Spanish migration policy and its coordination with the European Union. A system that often forgets the essential: it is not about figures but about human beings who risk their lives to seek another.
Names are important. They are the first thing we say when we introduce ourselves. When someone talks about us, they use it to define us, to give us meaning. The name anchors us to the world, gives us presence, and brings us closer to others. Without a name to identify us, we are only an impersonal concept. With form, but without identity.
Amal, Gamal, and Fatou are just random names, common in Morocco, Western Sahara, and Senegal. But there are many more names to talk about.
More than thirty thousand names that, according to data from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), have died or disappeared in the Mediterranean Sea since 2014. Each of those numbers leaves behind a life, a family, a community. An identity. When they are spoken of, they are not given meaning; they are just another number. They have no presence and do not seem anchored to this world. We do not get close to them. It is not possible to empathize with a number.
On the other side of the coin, those who make it. According to data from the Spanish Ministry Interior, 55,618 people arrived in Spain by sea in 2023 alone. People who left their homes and risked their lives fleeing wars, persecutions, and lack of opportunities. They also have names.
Spain, due to its proximity to North Africa, has been for years a major destination for thousands of people seeking to reach Europe. The Spanish southern border, which includes the Strait of Gibraltar as well as Ceuta, Melilla, and the Canary Islands, has one of the largest migration flows in the Mediterranean region.
According to official data, around three hundred and twenty thousand people have entered the country irregularly since 2015.
Problems and Limitations of Spanish Migration Policy
The Spanish Immigration Law, together with international cooperation and European Union policy, is responsible of managing a big share of the total immigration that enters the continent. This law regulates the conditions of entry and stay of those who access the country. For some, insufficient; for others, abusive and unfair. The only certain thing is that a handful of legal paragraphs condition the lives—and deaths—of hundreds of thousands of people.
The Spanish immigration system is not without problems. One of the most controversial practices carried out in immigration are the so-called hot returns. Amnesty International defines them as:
“The expulsion of migrant or refugee persons without them having access to due procedures and without them being able to challenge that act through an effective judicial remedy. In other words, they occur when the State Security Forces and Bodies expel migrant or refugee persons without due protection or guarantees. These people do not have the opportunity to explain their circumstances, request asylum, or appeal the expulsion.”
According to the Statista Research Department, between 2017 and 2022, there were about six thousand. Six thousand names and surnames to whom, after fleeing their countries and leaving everything behind, any type of help or opportunity was denied. They are names that, although not drowned, will not be said in a European reality that for many is a dream.
The worst case occurred in June 2022. Six meters high. Two parallel fences. Barbed spikes to prevent the jump, these replaced the razor wire that, until four years ago, cut hands and legs. Guard posts. A helicopter with a thermal camera. Police. Dogs. This was the welcome Melilla gave to the two thousand people who tried to climb the border. Most had crossed Africa from Sudan.
The result was between 37 and 100 dead, depending on the source consulted. About five hundred were hot-returned. Some of them injured, many put on buses and abandoned in Morocco, a country that is not even theirs. Others died along the way. The intervention of the Spanish and Moroccan police on both sides of the border was denounced by various collectives and associations. The events have not been investigated and, to this day, there are no culprits.
Another problem, the right to asylum. An international human right that any person in a situation of political persecution in their country of origin can exercise. However, the Spanish asylum system is not prepared to manage the avalanche of applications, around 119,000 in 2022 alone, according to the Spanish Commission for Refugee Aid.
What should initially be a quick process to offer protection to those who need it becomes a long bureaucratic ordeal, where the average wait for a response can last up to two years.
During this time, applicants enter a legal limbo. They lack any accreditation that states they are awaiting asylum confirmation, so their rights are limited, and they risk being detained and expelled from Spain for an irregular situation. Even after the process, nothing guarantees that asylum will be granted. As published by the Spanish Commission for Refugee Aid, in 2022, 16.5% of total applications were approved, while the European average is 38%.
Once asylum is denied, the affected person must leave the country within fifteen days, undo the path, and return to risk and misery or—on the contrary—remain in Spain as “illegal” and try to live with everything that entails. Not being able to sign a residence or work contract. Having a name but being a stranger.
If that stranger decides to stay and the authorities stop them, they will be taken to a Foreigner Internment Center (CIE in Spanish) while their expulsion is processed. This figure tries hard to separate itself—in theory—from a prison. It is not a jail. The detainees are there for not being Spanish and not having the resources to be. They have not committed any crime, but it is not a punishment body. It is not a jail. They are deprived of the freedom to leave the center. It is not a jail. They are surrounded by fences, bars, and guards. It is not a jail.
NGOs and associations have repeatedly denounced the CIEs for the conditions in which they keep detainees. In addition, there are hundreds of testimonies from people who have suffered assaults, abuses, and racism by the Police.
International Coordination
Far from people like Amal, Gamal, or Fatou, the European Union. Decisions made in this supranational governance body often ignore the suffering of the desperate. The names of those fleeing war, persecution, or poverty drown in the noise and figures of bureaucratic negotiations.
The European Union approved last year an increase in funding to Morocco to stop irregular immigration before reaching the continent: 500 million euros to be received between 2022 and 2027 in exchange for strengthening its borders, police resources, and detention of migrants.
This is common action on the continent. Since 2016, the EU has paid Turkey more than 6 billion euros for its management of immigration as the gateway from the Middle East to Europe and 60 million to the Western Balkans. In addition, countries like Libya, Nigeria, Bangladesh, and Pakistan have also received tens of millions as support related to migration.
Sergio Carrera, a researcher at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), criticized in an interview with Euronews the lack of transparency in the funds that the European Union allocates to other countries in migration matters.
“The Libyan Coast Guard and other EU-funded state entities are deeply involved in crimes against humanity. They are involved in smuggling, trafficking, and slavery. They detain people. They torture them to force their relatives to pay them,” Carrera said.
Moreover, Spain has various bilateral agreements with countries like Morocco, Mauritania, and Senegal. In the latter two, the readmission of migrants from those countries is accepted. In other words, facilitating the return of people that crossed the border to their country of origin quickly, hours and days after risking their lives to leave. Morocco does not contemplate this clause with its nationals but does with migrants from third countries.
Compliance with the agreements acts is an indispensable condition for these countries to receive “necessary development aid” in other strategic areas. Thousands of names with broken dreams at the stroke of a pen.
Migration as a Diplomatic Tool
The toolbox in international relations is large and often does not respond to morality. Migration has been and is used by many countries to destabilize territories, show their coercive capacity, or exert pressure to reach agreements. Spain knows this well.
In May 2021, Morocco loosened its border control, allowing more than 8,000 people to cross into Ceuta in just a few days. This action was a clear response to Spain’s decision to host and provide medical assistance to the Polisario Front leader. This movement fights for the independence of Western Sahara, a territory that Morocco claims as its own.
The Spanish government sent the Army to the border, clashed with those crossing, and carried out thousands of hot returns. Images could be seen of exhausted and desperate migrants who could not contain their tears, some of them children.
Turkey is another country that has taken advantage of its location as a border with Europe to use migration. In 2020, it opened the doors to 13,000 Syrian refugees, according to the International Organization for Migration’s estimate.
The reasons for this could be three, according to geopolitical experts contacted by EuroNews. One, to draw the international community’s attention to the situation in Syria, which threatened to increase the influx of refugees to Turkey. Two, the search for guarantees that Europe would continue financing the reception of refugees in Turkish territory. And three, that the EU would pressure Russia to stop supporting the Syrian government.
Outside the board of politics, agreements, and figures, what remains are people. Each migrant is a story, a name fighting not to be lost in the statistics. It is not possible to empathize with a number. Amal, Gamal, Fatou, and so many others are not numbers. They are people who have died; people who are called “illegal” in the country they live in; people who are currently navigating in a boat, climbing a fence, or walking across continents seeking opportunities. All of them are people. All of them have a name.
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