Asylum seekers in one of the rooms in Barajas on January 17.
Days and months pass, measures are improvised, but the situation of people seeking asylum at the Madrid-Barajas airport continues to be undignified and problematic.
The last wake-up call has come, once again, from the Ombudsman who, in his visit on January 19 to the rooms in which asylum seekers are crowded, verified, among other things, that women and children sleep on mats on the floor and who are forced to eat on the floor due to the lack of furniture.
“The only shower has been out of service for two weeks, they lack basic hygiene kits and feminine hygiene materials,” he points out in his latest resolution published this Tuesday.
They also do not have access to a telephone to communicate with their families, lawyers or the defender himself.
“I spent 16 days without a toothbrush, without a phone, sleeping on the floor.
There was a lot of dirt,” a Colombian mother with two children, ages three and eight, told EL PAÍS.
“I got my period and I was bleeding for four days with only two pads,” she explained.
The institution, whose technicians have been visiting the rooms since July, now considers that these people could allegedly be subjected "to degrading treatment, undermining their moral integrity."
It is the same observation that he made in 2020 after visiting the Gran Canaria dock of Arguineguín in 2020, the symbol of the poor management of the migration crisis in the Canary Islands.
The Ombudsman has demanded measures from those responsible for bringing order to the chaos that already began to brew in the summer.
The institution asks all competent departments and ministries to coordinate to guarantee applicants the right to physical and moral integrity and the protection of their health, the time they remain at the airport.
Ángel Gabilondo also demands that AENA collaborate to find solutions, since it manages and maintains the facilities where the asylum and inadmissible rooms at the Madrid airfield are located.
Gabilondo also demands that the Police authorize the exceptional entry into territory for humanitarian reasons for the most vulnerable profiles and has reiterated to the Ministry of Migration, a department to which this crisis is passing the profile, that it must coordinate with the Police to guarantee that the applicants Those who are allowed to enter the territory have appointments to request asylum in the province in which they are housed.
Both AENA and Migrations consider that the matter is not within their competence.
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Request asylum in Barajas: two weeks sleeping between the floor and a cot with two small children
The chaos in Barajas has been going on for a long time.
Already in summer, an increase in travelers using their stopover in Spain to request asylum and try to enter Spanish territory began to be detected.
First, they were Somali refugees who managed to reach Madrid after purchasing a Kenyan passport, a country that until January 20 was not required to have a transit visa to stopover at Spanish airports.
The hundreds of Somalis who used this formula to request protection have already triggered the alerts of the authorities and the first problems of overcrowding occurred.
Later, Barajas became an attractive destination for more people wanting to emigrate without getting on a boat.
Senegalese, Moroccans, Mauritanians, Nepalese... began to parade before the police to ask for asylum.
The lack of agents to carry out the necessary interviews to decide whether the petition is accepted for processing extended all the deadlines, which went from days to weeks, and people began to accumulate.
On December 22, three judges asked the police and the Ministry of the Interior for “urgent measures” to end overcrowding.
“The increase in arrivals at the border post has caused a worsening of the living conditions of the rooms, unprecedented overcrowding and a deterioration in minimum hygiene and health standards,” maintains the Ombudsman.
The numbers are unprecedented, but they should be manageable in an airport that aspires to receive 90 million passengers in 2031. In the month of January alone, 864 applications for international protection have been processed and 108 people have been returned, according to data provided by the Interior. .
400 people have been crammed into the rooms.
The Unified Police Union (SUP), which leads the complaints against the conditions in which the officers work, maintains that there are people from Mali (with a clear refugee profile) who have been locked up there since January 5.
The Government was taking measures, but the situation does not improve or, as the defender reflects, "it has worsened noticeably."
A week ago, the Red Cross, which provided assistance to new arrivals and was in charge of cleaning, stopped working at the airport.
“It is urgent that an adequate space be enabled and in decent conditions,” they maintain in the Ombudsman.
The number of people who are waiting for this decision (for their asylum request to be resolved) is so important that the existing difficulties in adequately addressing their requests are understood.
And although attention is paid to them with the utmost dedication, this is insufficient to provide an adequate response to each and every one of these people,” he adds.
This Tuesday, a fourth room (still without a shower) was opened for applicants in terminal 1, which can accommodate 162 people.
Cleaning is now the responsibility of the General Directorate of the Police.
The Interior has reinforced personnel and now there are 54 police officers covering the different shifts.
There are, however, only two officials from the Asylum Office (there were none before) who coordinate and support the agents, but who do not conduct interviews.
In parallel, Interior and Exterior are looking for how to "avoid the fraudulent use of stopovers in Madrid to countries that do not require an entry visa and that are used to try to enter Spain irregularly."
First, a transit visa was imposed on Kenya on January 20, and on February 19, it will be applied to Senegal.
For the moment, a similar measure with Morocco is ruled out, which has been asked to strengthen controls on flights leaving Casablanca bound for Spain.
And, although this is not publicized because the authorities consider that it exerts a “call effect”, the most vulnerable profiles (women, families with children...) have begun to be authorized to enter the territory.
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