POPULATION-SPAIN: Tourists, Immigrants Face Disparate Treatment

By Tito Drago Reprint | | Print |

Tito Drago

MADRID, Aug 29 2001 (IPS) - The flows of tourists and of undocumented immigrants have continued on the upswing this year in Spain, two phenomena that have defined this summer season – and which have provoked disparate reactions from the government, labour unions and rights groups.

Tourists are warmly received, even though their numbers surpass the resident population of the country, while illegal immigrants are detained and usually deported, realities that illicit tensions between sectors that have conflicting perspectives on these groups.

Spain, with 40 million inhabitants, last year received more than 48 million visitors, while by the end of this July the tourist tally had already surpassed 21 million, nearly four percent higher than in the same period in 2000, and reflecting a 12-percent increase in revenue for the industry.

The healthy performance of tourism, Spain’s leading industry, has the enthusiastic support of most other economic sectors as it consolidates Spain’s hold on third place in the world for number of visitors each year, after the United States and France.

The only significant criticism against tourism comes from environmental groups, which do not oppose the development of the sector itself, but demand that the centre-right government of José María Aznar play a more active role in protecting Spain’s natural environment, and the beach areas in particular because of the rising threat of desertification.

The story of immigrants is quite different. Those who enter Spain without a visa are considered “illegals” by the government, as stipulated by the Law on Foreigners, which entered into force Jan 1.

Pushed by the new legislation, nearly 300,000 immigrants rushed to regularise their residence during this year’s first quarter.

But also beginning then, the government made it clear that it would energetically apply the law and expel those who enter the country without a visa or an employment contract in hand.

However, neither threats nor an information campaign about the details of the Law on Foreigners and the problems awaiting immigrants – including danger to their own lives – have proved capable of halting the flow into Spain.

On Aug 19, a new record was set: police detained 567 recently arrived undocumented immigrants in Cádiz, on Spain’s southern coast on the Atlantic side of the Strait of Gibraltar, and at Fuerteventura, in the Canary Islands, a Spanish territory located in the Atlantic off the northwest coast of Africa.

A week later, nine other would-be immigrants died in an attempt to reach Fuerteventura Island.

Eight people who survived the tragedy told of how the immigrant traffickers forced the group to take to the ocean in unseaworthy “pateras”, or duckboats, leaving the larger ship behind because the traffickers wanted to escape detection by the authorities.

It is a widely recognised truth that Spain needs immigrants in order to cover labour demands, particularly in rural areas and in the construction sector, where there are many jobs left unfilled because Spaniards do not want them.

Fernando Villena, president of the Young Farmers’ Association, recognised as much Tuesday when he stated that agriculture faces desperate times due to the lack of workers.

For his part, Jesús Pérez, spokesman for the farming division of the General Union of Workers (UGT), one of Spain’s leading labour unions, is calling on the government to sign a social accord that covers the immigrant situation and their access to social security benefits.

But few employers in the farming and construction sectors offer employment contracts, and even fewer have the foresight that would allow immigrant workers to apply for visas, labour contract in hand, at the Spanish consulates in their countries of origin.

Gregorio Morán, of the Workers’ Commissions (CCOO), the nation’s other major union, indicated that employers turn to undocumented immigrants to fulfil their labour needs in order to avoid having to comply with collective employee agreements or to pay the higher wages set by the trade unions.

As a result, the demands of the Spanish labour market beckon people in other countries who desperately need jobs, feeding the flow of illegal immigrants into this country, seen as the back door for access to Europe.

Meanwhile, the Aznar government remains firm in its policy to enforce the Law on Foreigners, which implies detaining the recently arrived “illegals” and immediately initiating deportation proceedings, with expulsion occurring shortly thereafter.

The immigrants who are able to avoid the police’s high-tech surveillance systems along the borders and coasts embark on a risky adventure in attempting to start a new life in Spain because they face degrading treatment and informal work with low wages.

These individuals and families make their way with some support from non-governmental organisations, from labour unions and from certain sectors of the Catholic Church.

In response to the resulting social tensions, José Chamizo de la Concha, the “People’s Defender” (Ombudsman) of the autonomous Community of Andalusia, the most populous of Spain’s 17 communities, stresses that “immigration is, after all, a phenomenon of the poor… What is rejected is not the immigrant, but the person who has no money.”

“The Spanish coasts are full of (wealthy) drug traffickers from other countries, and I wonder if anyone has ever asked them to show their documents,” he said.

The presence of this category of “immigrants”, the criminals involved in the drug trade, is notorious in the more exclusive tourist areas, as is the lack of police repression against the illicit trade, to the point that it has prompted the Andalusian ombudsman to speak out.