RIGHTS-SPAIN: Peace in Europe’s Southern Gate

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Alicia Fraerman

MADRID, Feb 14 2000 (IPS) - Peace has returned to the southern Spanish town of El Ejido, where high-tech production techniques and big bucks agribusiness converge with the exploitation of immigrants submitted to degrading living and working conditions.

El Ejido is emerging from a long week of tension and incidents, including a racist outbreak by angry mobs against North African immigrants, unleashed by the Feb 6 murder of a young Spanish woman allegedly by a Moroccan national undergoing psychiatric treatment.

The past week has been described by Spanish writer Juan Goytisolo and French parliamentarian Sami Nair as the “gloomiest” since the end of the dictatorship of Francisco Franco (1939-75).

Businesses belonging to North Africans were looted, shops and homes were burnt, and immigrants themselves were the victims of violent attacks, while the police stood by and did nothing.

El Ejido, located in Andalusia on the Mediterranean sea, is a town of 55,000, including 15,000 immigrants. Of these, around 5,000 are illegal aliens, lacking visas and residency and work permits.

Until a decade ago, El Ejido was a backwater town in rural Andalusia. But that was until the greenhouses began to mushroom, their owners becoming rich overnight.

The climate is regulated in the greenhouses made of transparent plastic, which produce up to three harvests of fruit and vegetables a year, and which are managed by advanced computer systems. The products are mainly marketed over the Internet.

But that level of productivity, characteristic of the industrialised North, exists side by side with the exploitation of immigrant workers, who mainly come from northwest Africa, live in overcrowded slums and are marginalised by local residents.

That isolation is handed down to their children, 68 percent of whom attend five schools that are becoming more and more rundown, according to a study by the non-governmental Immigration Forum.

The racist outbreak, which caused material and physical damages among the immigrant community, sounded an alert throughout Spain, and triggered an indefinite strike by immigrant workers that was lifted Monday.

In the first two days alone, the strike caused greenhouse owners 50 million dollars in losses, according to estimates by the local farmers association.

Negotiations led to an agreement, and the strike was lifted Monday, until Feb 25. At that time, the strikers will verify compliance with the agreement. According to negotiators, all of the immigrants’ demands were accepted.

In first place, it was agreed that housing would be provided to all immigrants whose dwellings were damaged. Secondly, victims are to be immediately compensated for losses and damages caused by the disturbances.

But perhaps the sweetest victory for the North Africans was the promise of the immediate regularisation of the situation of all undocumented immigrants living in the agricultural region of the province of Almeria, of which El Ejido forms a part.

The implementation of a programme of low-cost housing for immigrants and poor Spanish nationals was also agreed, “so as to benefit all social groups and prevent the emergence of ghettos,” according to the document signed by the trade unions and immigrant and business associations of Almeria.

A permanent commission was set up to guarantee compliance with the agreement. The committee will be comprised of representatives of the business community, Spain’s central trade unions, the non- governmental organisation Almería Acoge and eight immigrant workers.