The situation of the Andalusian seasonal settlements reaches the European Parliament

The situation in which thousands of seasonal workers are living in shantytowns in the provinces of Almería and Huelva will be analyzed by the European Parliament and investigated by the European Commission.

This has been transmitted by the Petitions Commission of the Community Chamber to IU, the Multicultural Association of Mazagón and Almería Acoge, which in November 2020 filed a complaint with the institution denouncing the violation of human rights in those settlements, in which they claimed to the European Union "an immediate and firm response to the situation of the settlements in the provinces of Almería and Huelva."

"What we want is that the violation of human rights in these settlements be investigated in all senses, as human beings and as workers," Pepa Suárez, spokesperson for the Mazagón Multicultural Association, explains to this newspaper.

The note, signed by the President of the Commission, Dolors Montserrat (Popular Party), states that the results of the investigation commissioned to the Commission and the course of the petition before Parliament, which has already been transferred to the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs.

"This implies the beginning of a preliminary investigation that, according to our experience in the Petitions Committee, will predictably lead to a debate in the European Parliament on this matter and then the European Commission will have to take a position on it," says a spokesperson for IU.

A fire in a shanty town in Níjar leaves 200 homeless

A fire in a shanty town in Huelva leaves 400 people out in the open

In Andalusia there are 11 shanty towns, in which the calculations of the signatory entities say that there are about 10,000 people, whose humanitarian drama has been entrenched over the last 25 years.

The administrations involved, local, regional and state, have not found a housing and humanitarian solution and the complaint before the Petitions Committee refers to their "passivity."

Complaints of the UN Rapporteur

"Any information that comes out of the settlements and our borders is good for them to pressure the administrations and take action, something they should have done in these 20 years because it seems that if they are not pressured by international organizations, they will not move. ”, Affirms Suárez.

The United Nations rapporteur, Philip Alston, already denounced last year the conditions in which the Lepe settlement (Huelva) was found and both the Spanish and Andalusian Ombudsman have warned about the worsening of their situation, which has worsened with the pandemic.

“Any information that comes out of the settlements and our borders is good for them to pressure the administrations and take action, something they should have done in these 20 years because it seems that, if they are not pressured by international organizations, they will not they move ”, affirms Suárez.

This circumstance is also highlighted in the joint complaint by IU and the NGOs.

"To date there has not been a minimum prevention program during the period of confinement in the settlements by the administrations, which on their part denotes a negligence that borders on racism," says the letter, which is Attention is also drawn to the violation of the European directives that regulate the conditions of entry and stay of third-country nationals for employment purposes or the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, especially with regard to dignity. human rights, non-discrimination or the rights of the minor.

In addition, the complaint warns of the difficulties that the municipalities pose when registering migrants residing in shanty towns, the practice of dismantling by the municipal authorities and the fires in the towns, a drama that is becoming more and more common.

In the early morning of February 13 to 14, the flames destroyed 1.5 hectares of the Níjar settlement, in Almería (the largest in Andalusia) and a week later, the fire destroyed some 400 shacks in the settlement of the Huelva municipality of Palos de la Frontera.

In the latter, its neighbors have already begun to build new slums from the rubble.