A Moroccan gendarme next to the fence that separates Morocco from Melilla, on June 26. FADEL SENNA (AFP)
The fence between Melilla and Morocco continues to be the scene of dramas with no end in sight.
The president of the city, Eduardo de Castro, asks for more personal and material means "to protect the border" in the face of a situation "not very encouraging in the sense that these migrants are desperate."
The same claim resounded in the ranks of the Melilla PP hours after the attempted entry and among unions of the security forces.
The last attempt to enter last Friday left at least 23 dead in Chinatown (hamlet of the Moroccan municipality of Beni Enzar), a figure that several non-governmental organizations have raised to 37. On the Spanish side, 57 young people and 49 agents suffered injuries and wounds.
"The fence can be raised higher, but they will always look for an alternative," says the president from Melilla in a conversation with EL PAÍS.
And he highlights that “those massive, violent jumps, in some cases, cannot be the option to solve the desperation of migrants;
this is not an admissible situation in a rule of law”.
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New images of the jump to the Melilla fence
Interior sources assure that the city is well taken into account.
"There have never been so many agents," says one of them.
In March, 70 Civil Guards arrived in Melilla to reinforce the 720 that were already in the town.
This summer it is expected that new members of both the National Police and the Civilian Armed Institute will join and work continues on the border perimeter to finish installing the inverted combs that have replaced the concertinas.
The sight is now set on Morocco.
“It is the first time that the support of the Gendarmerie has been seen so clearly, other times, it was not there or was not expected,” De Castro claims, referring to the penultimate jump over the fence, in March, the largest of those recorded, with some 2,500 people trying to get past the perimeter.
Until 954 they managed to enter on two consecutive days, in broad daylight and in the face of a certain passivity of the Moroccan forces.
Two weeks later, the change of the Spanish Government with respect to Western Sahara as an autonomous region within Morocco was made public.
The maneuver made it possible to restore diplomatic relations between Madrid and Rabat with special attention to the reopening of the border, closed since 2020, and migration control.
“It would be important to highlight that this has not happened in Melilla, but on the other side of the border, Morocco, without prejudice to the need to strengthen our side and greater collaboration”, highlights Sofía Acedo, PP senator for Melilla, “currently, and we have been like this for years, the perimeter has been reinforced with special intervention groups, in a timely manner, before periods in which it is believed that the threat of assault increases.
For Acedo, this strategy is not effective because "the assaults occur at any time."
"It is necessary to have our border guarded at all times," she points out.
This "greater cooperation" between Spain and Morocco, which has also been highlighted by the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, and the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, has exacted a very high price at the gates of the city.
The images of bodies piled up, inert, next to the border crossing are shocking.
"The relations of the Civil Guard with the [Moroccan] Gendarmerie are close and it is good that they recover," says the local president, "a different question is what happens later, and in Moroccan territory.
In the end, the result has not been so good.
"Spain and Europe are paying for this type of violence," laments Josep Buades, head of the Jesuit Migrant Service, an organization that provides legal assistance to asylum seekers and migrants in Melilla, "if we want Human Rights to be respected, we have to for us to take a step forward”.
For Buades, the border closure decreed in 2020 due to the pandemic and the reform of the fence have meant a change in dynamics: "The numbers have dropped a lot."
So far this year, there have been 1,150 irregular entries in Melilla: 954 in the two jumps in March and 133 last Friday.
Of the latter, all have applied for asylum.
The figures are still far from those recorded before the pandemic.
In 2019, 2,212 people entered from January 1 to June 15;
2,652, in 2018. The profile is also different: with the restrictions on passers-by at the reopened border, Yemenis, Syrians, Tunisians and other Arab nationalities arrive in Melilla only by trickle and often by sea.
Only sub-Saharans venture over the fence, as they cannot even get close to the asylum office at the Beni Enzar border.
“If sub-Saharan people could access [the asylum office], they would still not risk having to jump a fence or have to get on a small boat,” criticizes Estrella Galán, general director of the Spanish Commission for Refugee Aid.
"If the government wants to avoid dramatic situations on the southern border, it will have to articulate safe and legal channels," she insists, "nothing new has to be invented, these elements exist [in Spanish law]."
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