Refugees Welcome? | A Paralyzed Process

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The rise of VOX might counter the question asked by this series, but VOX does not speak for all of Spain, and certainly not Catalunya. In the second piece in this series on Spain’s experience of Europe’s migrant crisis, we assess how Barcelona specifically has been affected by it.

Some in Spain are doing their level best to make refugees feel less than welcome. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve by now heard about VOX, Spain’s newly emboldened far-right political party (a phrase many commentators thought would never again be uttered). Vox’s surge to 15% of the vote in the recent general election, thus becoming Spain’s third party, was the culmination of a dramatic rise for this once-fringe Andalusian group. The upturn in support can, in part, be traced back to the migrant crisis which saw Spain become Europe’s main gateway for refugees arriving across the Mediterranean in 2018.

The Surge of Spanish Nationalism

To talk of Spain and refugees is normally to talk of Malaga, Cadiz, Melilla and Ceuta, the Andalusian and Spanish-Morrocan enclaves which bear the brunt of landing migrants. VOX’s rhetoric over the past few years has been littered with racist proclamations about migrants out for people’s jobs, and these messages have taken hold in low-income towns where foreign newcomers are treated with mistrust. While this isn’t a piece about VOX, its rise is inherently linked to the migrant crisis which hastened the arrival of these foreign newcomers, and the effects of its message—which is also ardently anti-Catalan—is a clear counter to the title of this series.

To talk of Catalunya and refugees? Not so much. Barcelona doesn’t tend to figure in this question, mainly because the city’s experience of the Mediterranean migrant crisis cannot really be compared with Andalusia, Southern Italy or Greece, as the region doesn’t have an accessible coastline. But that doesn’t mean the city is not feeling the crisis’ ripples, as many refugees arriving from the southern border—often literally still damp from the crossing—are sent by the Spanish authorities to cities like Barcelona by land, either as a thoroughfare to the rest of Europe or to settle more permanently.

“99% of people are rescued by sea and then taken to a port in Andalusia,” says Ignasi Calbó, the former director of Ciutat Refugi who we heard from in the previous piece, when I spoke to him earlier this year. “They then spend 72 hours in a police station, have their fingerprints taken and then get an expulsion order. And with that expulsion order, they are sent to Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao—mainly border points. From here they stay two or three days in order to go to France, or they stay in Barcelona because they have friends or relatives here.”

Protecting Refugees’ Rights

Barcelona has been affected by Europe’s refugee crisis, perhaps even more acutely than other major European cities, given it’s relative proximity to the new frontier of Andalusia. As such, it has a number of systems and processes in place for taking in, looking after and integrating refugees into society.

This is run by a combination of the Spanish state and Ciutat Refugi, the latter of which is the city’s main body for putting policy into place to aid in the integration and safeguarding of refugees’ rights. “What we do is try to put refugee and migration policies into the city’s normal policies,” Calbó tells me. “We try to give special services and to grant services to migrants and refugees as normal and regular citizens.”

Migrants from the southern border, however, only make a small number of the total of refugees arriving in Barcelona. According to Calbó, most of the people that Ciutat Refugi deals with arrive by air from the Spanish speaking world across the Atlantic. “We have three main influxes we are confronting in the country right now: refugees, southern border entrances, and unaccompanied minors. But in Barcelona we don't have Syrians, we don't have Afghans, we don't have all the normal nationalities that they have in the rest of Europe. We have Latin Americans: mainly Venezuelans, but now it's also Colombians, Hondurans and Salvadorians. It’s mainly people coming from the airport, asking for asylum there, or staying for as long as their tourist visa will let them, then asking for asylum.” 

The visceral, undeniably disturbing image of asylum seekers rushing fences in Melilla or collapsing, exhausted onto tourist filled Andalusian beaches explains why Spain’s southern border migrants are the most talked about (and why VOX’s message took hold so quickly in the region). However, that doesn’t mean those arriving by air have had any less of a traumatic journey. Latinos are also frequently fleeing violence and political turmoil, and even more so these days. “Before,” Calbó notes, “it would be we get one of the members of the family that came to try to have a job or a flat, and then they could take the family to the city. And now it is different—now it is whole families fleeing from violence and looking for a new life in the city, so it means that the scope has changed a lot.”

Spain’s Latino Refugees

Not so much is made about Spain’s “other” refugees. You won't see VOX standing on an anti-Latino platform, even if prejudice against Southern and Central American immigrants does still abound in Spain. Maybe it’s because of the history of pan-Atlantic migration, or that the stories of Latino asylum seekers are in a common tongue, but their tales are more often ones of quiet integration into the large, vibrant, diasporic communities that have grown in cities across the country, Barcelona included.

Most people who arrive in Barcelona seeking refuge will go through the formal legal process of applying for asylum. This accounts for some 80% of cases, given most people know that being granted asylum is the most effective way to become legalized with papers in Spain. The legal process for this is long and arduous: Calbó says getting your papers can take anywhere from two to eight years, leaving people uncertain and unsettled for huge lengths of time. Indeed, Calbó asserts that citizens from many countries are unlikely to be granted asylum altogether. “The problem is, after they ask for asylum they are not always going to be granted it. It’s often 75%, but in some cases, like Hondurans and El Salvadorians, nearly 80% of them are not. So they become irregular migrants.”

In social terms, the asylum process is a bit more regimented. Without papers they may be, but the Spanish state does at least make sure asylum seekers are housed, fed and given their basic human rights. In Barcelona, this is done through the Servei d'Atenció a Immigrants, Emigrants i Refugiats—SAIER. 

Spain's Two Year Integration Plan

SAIER carries out a two year process of care. It first sees that asylum seekers are granted an initial six months of food, shelter and language and job courses. After that, they must find their own place to live, even as they receive some continued support for the following six to nine months. The final stage sees refugees given a further six months of intermittent support with things like language and books for study.

While the legal side of the asylum process can seem callous, rigid and paralyzed by the huge quantities of applications they receive, Calbó insists that the social care element of SAIER and Ciutat Refugi takes a more human approach. No matter your legal status or whether your papers are in order, you will be looked after: “We think that migration and asylum has to be seen as a right, meaning that when you arrive in Barcelona you deserve basic rights to services. We don't care about your papers. We don't see people with a nationality. You are a citizen of Barcelona and you deserve the right to these services—school, languages, libraries, cultural centers. They are for everyone.”

As such, Ciutat Refugi assists with implementing SAIER’s two year program, as do various other NGOs. This, though, is where the issues arise. Calbó says there is a lack of communication between the organizations at play which makes the running of an effective system almost impossible.

Lack of Governance Limits Effectiveness

“What is the problem?” He responds, incredulously, when I ask about it. “In the first six months it is handled by the state but carried out by NGOs. Some NGOs have been in Barcelona for a long time: they know the city, they know the social benefits. But some of them came to Barcelona, maybe from Brussels, and they don't do anything about it. So there is a huge difference in your chances [of getting asylum] if you are with one NGO or if you are with another.” 

Calbó continues, his frustration growing with every syllable. “There is no multi-level governance. If a person has been in the care of the state for two years, and after that he is dumped on the city’s social services, they are not told anything about those two years. You don’t know if he is good at work, if he needs work skills, you don't know if he needs better language courses, if he has problems with the family, if he has mental health problems. You don't know anything, so you have to begin again … It’s a lack of governance, plainly. There are three administrations but they don't talk to each other.”

His anger at something seemingly resolvable—to an outsider ignorant of the inner workings of a civil service, at least—is palpable. But beyond a vast restructuring of Spanish governmental bureaucracy, what else can be done to improve things? “At a technical level we have done a lot of invisible work, lobbying and things.” Calbó tells me. “We have also demanded the NGOs list reports on what happens with asylum seekers in the two years they are in their care, so at least now we have some information on that. The ideal thing would be that there is coordination throughout all the phases, so you could have the information ready and treat them accordingly, but it’s not. There is still a lot of work to be done.”

The Nausicaa Program

After the initial two year SAIER program, Calbó stresses that the Spanish state offers almost no further help. It’s why Ciutat Refugi started the Nausicaa program to give asylum seekers a “final push” to help them integrate into society. It does this through a consistent and comprehensive scheme of social monitoring for six to nine months after SAIER’s two year cycle, aiming to give new immigrants real autonomy, freedom from reliance on the state and the ability to find legal work, not in “black.”

Calbó is uncharacteristically optimistic when I ask him about Nausicaa, and tells me that it has already had some really promising effects. “It is one of the things I am really happy about because it’s amazing how it is working. We have a program with sports, a program with civil society, programs for labor and language integration. We try to get them the padró, we try to give them schooling, help them through all the bureaucracy. We try to help to put in all the phases of the social services run by the state.”

“For example,” he continues, “We have a program not only for labor integration, but in terms of the quality of labor integration. It tries to make sure that people who have skills, titles or knowledge are given a job that is equal to their skills.” The underutilization of skilled workers is one of the most common, and indeed the most frustrating, stories you consistently hear about migrants moving from the third to the first world. While there is a brain drain from low-GDP countries to more developed ones, people with unvalidated skills and professional qualifications all too often end up in labor which is clearly below their skill set. 

It’s something that Calbó feels passionately about fixing: “People from Venezuela who are doctors, at the end of the day we might offer them a shop keeping office! This is not our fault, this is the fault of the administration, because to compose a title [a Spanish doctor’s certificate] can take three or four years. So what we did is make a program for people who have a title. For example, we might send a dentist to the official school of dentists so that they can work in a dentist’s office. Even if they cannot act as a dentist, they can at least work in the office and learn how dentists work in Spain. And through these kinds of programs there have been a lot of people who at the end of the day were hired, and are now working as a normal dentist in Spain, or an engineer, or whatever it is.”

Cities Helping Cities

The success of Nausicaa (and SAIER too, despite Calbó’s scathing reports), has seen other cities across Spain, and further afield, come to Barcelona to see how things are being done. This kind of cross-pollination is another core part of what Ciutat Refugi does. The Refugee City Network is one of its flagship inter-city programs, a “political association” which encourages municipalities across Spain to exchange their best practices so they can each fine tune their social services.

Beyond Spain, there is the City to City program, where cities from across Europe that have been affected by the refugee crisis come together to exchange processes in a similar manner. “This is something we did, as we found there was no real solidarity between the European states,” Calbó explains. “At the time, Greece and Italy were receiving so many migrants, so we helped Lesbos with their migrant program and with the life vests—they had so many problems with the pollution caused by that. We also helped Lampedusa, until they changed the mayor. And recently we’ve been working with Naples—there is a big history of cooperation between Naples and Barcelona.”

The city also has a number of programs working with places beyond Europe’s shores, the places where the roots of the migrant crisis are found. Calbó goes on, “We also have international cooperation with other places: Jordan, Lebanon, a lot with Central America. We have been working with them since the 1980s, and that's always been very effective. They come here to see how we do things, like with these new automatic rubbish systems. They are interested in how we recycle, how we do markets—we do these very well.”

Where Do We Go from Here?

There is light, then, at the end of this long, bleak, winding tunnel. However, election after election and the disruption of the Catalan Independence crisis has not eased the strain on a system which needs all the help it can get, and fast. Calbó is all too aware of this: “It has been a really tough political time in Spain, and in Barcelona it has been horrible. Four elections, and we also have the independence process which closed down all the Catalan institutions. It has been a really, really tough time trying to continue this in Barcelona.”

Tough too, presumably, because Europe’s refugee crisis is no longer at the top of any governments’ agendas, with threats to the European Union deemed more pressing issues. But even if the number of migrants arriving in Europe has fallen, those who have made their home here over the past few years haven’t gone anywhere, and the number of Latin Americans arriving in Spain is increasing. These asylum seekers need adequate first response care and, despite the poison VOX is peddling, help to integrate into Spanish society.

This process of integration is much more difficult to assess than the successes and failures of the legal and social structures put in place by Ciutat Refugi and the Spanish government. How can you tell how well a particular person feels they have settled into a new life in a new country? And how do you know whether the traumas they have experienced in their journey have yet been overcome? Personal stories hold the answer.

In the third and final part of this series on Spain’s experience of Europe’s migrant crisis, we’ll show the human side of the crisis. We’ll hear the inspiring story of one political asylum seeker from Venezuela, Pedro Pimental, as well as the work done by psychologist Patricia Jirón and Centro EXIL to help asylum seekers overcome past traumas.

You can read more about the work that Ignasi Calbó and Ciutat Refugi do here.

Harry Stott is a regular contributor to the Barcelona Metropolitan covering Brexit, local political and social issues as well as the music scene. He recently received a B.A. in music from the University of Leeds, and now writes and produces radio content for a number of organizations in Barcelona and beyond. You can read more of Harry's articles here.