This text belongs to ‘Penínsulas’, the newsletter that Enric Juliana sends to the readers of ‘La Vanguardia’ every Tuesday. If you want to receive it, sign up here.
September 2023, a Parliament in southern Europe holds a very tense debate for the election of the prime minister and in the course of the discussion, referring to the general situation of the country, immigration is barely discussed. Nobody exclaims from their seat: “They are invading us!” Nobody tries to persuade the other deputies that a dark maneuver is underway, financed by the Soros Foundation and other globalist entities, to proceed with the ethnic substitution of the Spanish population. Nobody, not even the extreme right party, is fighting to place immigration at the center of the debate, which revolves around the unity of Spain.
You explain it in Greece and Italy and their eyes will widen, since the dramatic arrival of thousands and thousands of people to their shores has become the cause of great political unrest. An obsessive theme. Many Greek and Italian politicians are fighting against each other to appear as the most aggressive in the face of a phenomenon that is very difficult to manage. The governments of both countries have tightened reception regulations and are asking the other countries of the European Union to take co-responsibility for a problem that they cannot face alone. In Spain we are not in that box today. You explain it in Brussels and they will be surprised. You explain it in Portugal and they will surely understand it, since something similar happens in the neighboring country.
Indeed, in the failed investiture of Alberto Núñez Feijóo there was hardly any talk about immigration. While a possible amnesty for the Catalan independence movement was hotly debated in Congress, tough negotiations were taking place in Brussels on the reform of the asylum and reception system in the EU. Finally there was no agreement, due to Italy’s blockade. A text negotiated by the Spanish presidency had achieved German support but was paralyzed at the last minute by the Italians. The role of NGOs in migration crises pits Germans and Italians against each other. There will surely be an agreement in the coming weeks and Spain will be a fundamental part of it.
While thousands of people chanted last week in Madrid the slogan “Puigdemont to prison!”, German Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz asked the Polish Government for explanations for the illegal sale of 250,000 work visas in the Schengen zone, which would have taken carried out with the complicity of Polish consular officials. This is a scandal that could influence the legislative elections scheduled for October 15 in Poland. From Warsaw they have responded to Berlin by accusing them of wanting to interfere in their electoral process. And the German federal government has responded with a reinforcement of police controls on the borders with Poland and the Czech Republic. Irregular immigration is also once again the subject of lively social discussion in Germany at a time when the far-right party Alternative for Germany appears in second position in almost all polls and a cycle of regional elections is about to begin.
While Pedro Sánchez commissioned the Valladolid deputy Óscar Puente to be the surprise speaker of the Socialist Party in the investiture debate, in Italy hectic discussions were taking place in the coalition government of the three right-wing parties about the position to be adopted in the face of the collapse of the island of Lampedusa, due to the accumulation of refugees and immigrants from the coasts of Libya and Tunisia. Giorgia Meloni came to power a year ago promising a tough line on irregular immigration and now she watches in despair as the problem has worsened. I remember it well since I was following those elections from Milan and Florence. Meloni came to power with a gale of high-sounding words. A year later she remains ahead in the polls, but wear and tear has begun. There are no easy solutions to complex problems.
In Libya, the state is practically destroyed twelve years after the fall of Colonel Gaddafi’s regime, a systemic collapse that Italy did not want and that was accelerated by the express will of the governments of France, the United Kingdom and the United States. Tunisia is on the verge of bankruptcy and President Kais Saied uses control of its coasts as a mechanism of pressure on Europe, since he does not want to accept a loan from the International Monetary Fund that forces him to cut state subsidies for gasoline and bread, measures that could provoke a popular uprising. The Tunisian pressure falls mainly on Italy.
“Spain is a curious country in which the constant territorial discussions are highly dramatized, but at the same time they absorb energy that could cause other tensions, surely more bitter,” diplomat Jérôme Bonnafont, French ambassador to Spain, once told me. 2012 and 2015. I think he was right. In his office, Bonnafont had a map of Spain with the autonomous communities perfectly delimited. That map has been inherited by the current ambassador, Jean-Michel Casa. The territorial question is a black hole that absorbs a lot of energy in Spain. We are seeing it these days. The weight of Catalonia in Spanish politics attracts passions and bad moods in abundance, erasing from the agenda an issue as burning throughout Europe as the rules and mechanisms for welcoming or rejecting people who arrive in search of a better life, in many cases risking their lives and little assets.
But do not get our hopes high. If the landings in Spain today had the same intensity as in Italy or Greece, the situation would be different. Then the breakup of Spain and the invasion of Spain would be debated at the same time. The agreements with Morocco undoubtedly have to do with moderating the arrival of immigrants. The Ministry of the Interior publishes a fortnightly data bulletin. So far this year, irregular immigration, by land and sea, has only increased by 3.3%. Arrivals by land to Ceuta and Melilla have decreased by 61% and a slight statistical decrease is observed in the Canary Islands, despite the landings this summer. The route that leads to the Mediterranean coast and the Balearic Islands, originating in Algeria, grows by 10%. These are significant data, but they are not the numbers from Italy where landings have multiplied by three since Giorgia Meloni governed. She’s not to blame, obviously. The situation in Libya and Tunisia is very complicated.
In Spain, the agreements with Morocco, discussed and debatable in some of their aspects, are reflected today in migration statistics. Problem solved? No. The relationship between Spain and Morocco will continue to be very complex in the coming years, but in Italy today they would pay to have a country with the internal stability of Morocco on the other side of the coast of Sicily.
Sometimes there is distant and tiny news that can provide us with interesting data. Elections have just been held in the Madeira archipelago, a Portuguese enclave in the Atlantic Ocean since the end of the 16th century, not far from the Canary Islands. A thousand kilometers further north are the Azores, also under Portuguese jurisdiction, an archipelago that played an important role in the Second World War as a base for Anglo-American aviation, thanks to the old friendship between the British and the Portuguese.
Portugal does not have autonomous regions, except for Madeira and the Azores. The Autonomous Region of Madeira has been governed uninterruptedly by the Social Democratic Party (PSD) since 1976. The PSD is a center-right party with more moderate profiles than the Spanish Popular Party and is currently in opposition in the Assembly of the Republic.
This time they have won again in Madeira, but they have lost the absolute majority, despite having gone to the polls in alliance with the other party of the classic right (CDS-PP). They are missing one seat. They could have allied with the far-right party Chega (Basta), which has obtained four regional deputies, but they have opted for a pact with the environmentalists of the PAN (People-Animals-Nature). The leader of the PSD, Luis Montenegro, has taken advantage of this circumstance to reaffirm that his party does not intend to make an agreement with Chega on a national scale. A good Portuguese friend tells me: “In Portugal, the lessons that come from Spain are learned very quickly.”
Spanish PP and Portuguese PSD, two ways of approaching the relationship with the extreme right. It will be interesting to see which of the two returns to the Government first.
