With the migrant crisis continuing to peak for Europe's Mediterranean nations, and as it has lately become politically disastrous for others like Germany, resulting in a half-baked quick fix offered by the European Union to pay out 6,000 euros ($7,000) for each migrant a country takes in, statements coming Spain's political leaders suggest its reputed "tolerance" as a country open to migrants is increasingly fragile with resources and infrastructure stretched to the limit.
What The Guardian observed earlier this summer now seems to be playing out: though there are happy scenes when migrants finally disembark on Spanish soil, such scenes inevitably "have been followed by the relentless task of coping with new arrivals."
In 2017 Spain witnessed a surge of illegal migration, mostly seaborne, but also at its two tiny North African enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta. Image via Soeren Kern
"Right now we’re seeing double the numbers arriving compared to the same period last year and last year the number was double that of the previous year," David Ortiz, the Red Cross migrant and refugee department head in the southern coastal port city of Málaga, told Politico. "Can we manage the arrival of 300 people? Yes. But if those 300 people arrive on the same day, it gets difficult,” he added.
While others like Italy and Malta have recently turned away large boats full of hundreds, sparking a feud with EU administration and other countries over closing their ports, Spain's newly in office Socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has signaled an open-door "welcoming" policy of being ready to accept the EU's call to accept migrants; however a recent surge in seaborne entries could test Spain's "fragile tolerance" past breaking point.
“It is our obligation to help avoid a humanitarian disaster by offering a safe harbor to these people,” Sánchez said after controversially agreeing to accept the Aquarius in June, an emergency rescue vessel carrying over 600 migrants who had been picked up off the Libyan coast, but which had been rejected by both Italy and Malta, sparking a bitter stand-off within the EU.
As other Mediterranean countries close their ports to unauthorized migrant traffic, western Mediterranean routes have increased, making Spain top the chart in terms of migrant and refugee destination numbers.
According to the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration as of mid-July about 18,600 migrants had reached Spain by sea from Morocco since the beginning of 2018, which is double the number for the same period in 2017.
Via the Gatestone Institute
Like the EU in its recent roll out of the plan to pay governments for accepting migrants while also funding emergency "transit points" from an EU common budget, it appears Spain is getting ready to merely throw a lot of money at the problem, as Reuters reports Monday:
Spain aims to...