The hardening of the migratory discourse led by Fernando Grande-Marlaska generates the first friction among the members of the Executive. United We can not accept that the Executive prime a security policy against the guarantee of human rights in immigration matters. In recent weeks, Marlaska has defended controversial actions such as forced deportations of potential refugees to Mauritania and the ruling that guarantees hot returns. His department also works on a future asylum law that will entail restrictions for applicants.
"Hardening the law against people who come to work in our country fleeing hunger or war or praising sentences that endorse the violation of their human rights is not only the opposite of the coalition agreement, it is also the opposite of what the vast majority of the voters of the PSOE and United Podemos want, "say sources from Unidos Podemos, which has asked the Interior Ministry for explanations.
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On Monday, the minister spoke for the first time about the Strasbourg ruling - which endorsed hot returns - and maintained that the ruling states that "violence is a limit to the exercise of fundamental rights" in reference to the alleged violence used by immigrants to jump the fences of Ceuta and Melilla. Marlaska, however, did not clarify whether the Executive will keep the practice of hot returns.
The draft of the future asylum law, advanced by THE COUNTRY and which reflects a tightening of the requirements to grant this protection, has not pleased the members of the PSOE. "The line of reform of the law that Interior proposes is erroneous. It is intended to tighten the conditions of access to asylum when Spain already has one of the lowest rates of protection today. Nothing is raised about the policies of reception with reinforcement of the attention and inclusion of refugees. It seems more like a border law than an asylum law, "says MEP Ernest Urtasun, also critical of the Strasbourg ruling.
The immigration issue has become a source of conflict in the Government. Last Friday a meeting was held in La Moncloa, chaired by Pedro Sánchez, attended by Vice Presidents Carmen Calvo and Pablo Iglesias, Grande-Marlaska, Foreign Minister, Arancha González Laya, Justice, Juan Carlos Campo, and the one of Transports, José Luis Ábalos. At the meeting, convened to discuss future actions in immigration matters, we also talked about the decision of hot returns. Two knowledgeable sources of the meeting say that the discussion was tense and that it was settled with the reinforcement of Marlaska's thesis.
Six weeks has taken to alter the peace that marked the pattern of the Government since the investiture of Sanchez. Although the members of United We can present at the Council of Ministers have not publicly shown their discomfort, it is the first battle that Pablo Iglesias's party poses to the PSOE since Sanchez was inaugurated president. United We have always made flag of the migratory cause, one of the aspects that separate it most from the PSOE.