North coast of Africa is doorway to new life for many migrants

Germinal Castillo pulls out his mobile phone and finds a photograph on it. It is of a group of sub-Saharan Africans inside a tiny inflatable boat, with waves from the Mediterranean Sea crashing around them.

“There are five or six people on this boat,” he says. “And yet we’re frightened of letting our children go within a couple of metres of the water when we’re at the beach!”

He is inside the Red Cross office where he works in Ceuta, a Spanish city on the coast of north Africa. For many Africans, Ceuta and its sister city, Melilla, are the doorway to Europe. They try to go through it by climbing border fences, stowing away in hidden compartments in cars, or by boat, like those in the photo.

“When they’re lucky enough to be rescued, they’re in a terrible, horrible state,” he says. “In general it’s hypothermia, a lot of burns as well, because they get burned by the fuel.”

The Red Cross in Ceuta is well equipped for these arrivals, but Castillo is clearly frustrated at how ill-prepared Spain and Europe as a whole are to handle sub-Saharan migration northward. He says the recent European economic crisis has cut international co-operation and therefore further encouraged migration.

Italy has been the main focus of the phenomenon lately. But an estimated 20,000 migrants tried to get to Europe via Ceuta and Melilla last year; about 10 per cent managed to get there.

Resources

“It’s clear that if you create the necessary mechanisms in the country of origin so that humans have resources, then they won’t go elsewhere,” he says. “It’s easy, isn’t it? If you have what you need, then you won’t go elsewhere. Nobody wants to leave their home – unless it’s as a tourist.”

A half-hour walk away from the Red Cross office, up a wooded hill on the outskirts of Ceuta, many of those who have made the perilous journey to Europe can be found. This is the city’s temporary immigrant centre, where migrants are brought on their arrival and where they receive food, clothes and accommodation while their legal status is considered. Government figures show the centre currently has just under 500 migrants, close to its maximum capacity. Most are west African.

"God helped me get here – I'm very happy for myself and for God," says Abdubak Baba, an 18-year-old from Guinea who reached Ceuta from Morocco recently by boat. "I came here to make my life easier, to have a very good life."

Like the others staying here, he can come and go from the centre as he pleases during the day, returning for the evening curfew. All of those staying here are waiting for their legal status to be processed so that they can be taken to the Spanish mainland and start what they hope is a new working life.

Many are frustrated at not yet being able to embark on their European dream. Mohamed Sissoko has been here five months and says two years ago he left Guinea after both his parents were killed in tribal fighting. He crossed Mali, Mauritania and Morocco, from where he and six others made a nine-hour journey in a small boat to Ceuta.

Fate

“I have to believe in a good future, in fate,” he says. “I’m in Ceuta but I want to leave this place and see Europe and try to continue my education. If I can do that I will have the chance to find work.”

One of the places where they frequently try to reach Ceuta is at a beach called El Tarajal, just yards away from the official border crossing between Spain and Morocco. The border fence stretches into the sea and for some migrants, entering the water on the Moroccan side and swimming round it has become yet another way of getting to European territory.

In the early hours of February 6th, 2014, dozens of young African men started wading into the water to do just that. Waiting on the shore were Spanish civil guards, with antiriot gear, including teargas and firearms with rubber bullets. As the migrants swam around the fence, they started to panic and in the next few minutes at least 15 of them drowned.

The cause of that panic – and the migrants’ deaths – has been the subject of intense scrutiny since. In recent weeks, 16 civil guards have been investigated as suspects for their alleged part in what has become known as the “El Tarajal tragedy”.

The interior ministry insists the migrants caused their own deaths because of the crowded scramble in the water. But forensic evidence and contradictory declarations by the head of the Civil Guard – saying first that no rubber bullets or gas were fired, then admitting that they were, but not at the migrants – have fuelled criticism of the Spanish authorities’ handling of the incident, as have other testimonies.

“I saw what happened,” one migrant who survived the tragedy, identified only as “Charles”, told a Spanish film crew. He, like several other survivors, said the civil guards fired gas and rubber bullets at the migrants. “It’s the Civil Guard. It’s them that killed all the people,” he said.

Pressure

The

El Tarajal tragedy

and its fallout have brought the desperation of these migrants into even sharper focus than before. But they have also highlighted Spain’s difficulties in handling the migratory pressure.

“I think it was a monumental mistake on the part of the Civil Guard,” says Juan Antonio Delgado, spokesman for the equivalent of the Civil Guard’s labour union, the AUGC. “We work under a lot of pressure and pressure is bad.”

He says only about 50 civil guards patrol the Ceuta border at any one time and they lack resources. He also complains that these civil guards are often pushed into improvisation because they lack a clear protocol to follow. While he is adamant those who are on trial did not aim their firearms at the migrants, he accepts their actions have shaken trust in the institution for which he works.

“Before, the Civil Guard had a humane image,” he says. “And what happened in [El Tarajal], well, now there’s a before and an after.”