Throughout last year, Spain processed 3,386 requests for international protection at border posts. Although the Asylum and Refuge Office does not break down the specific locations, police sources assure that the vast majority of requests are distributed between the Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas and Josep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat airports. This year, in January alone, 864 asylum applications have been processed at the Madrid airfield – and 108 people have been returned – by sub-Saharan migrants who have found a way to emigrate without having to than getting on a boat. This new migration air route has overwhelmed the reception rooms and, although in recent days the situation seems more controlled, no one dares to predict that the chaos has completely subsided.

Any online flight search engine offers tickets from Casablanca to South American countries such as Brazil, El Salvador or Bolivia for about 1,000 euros. The key is to make a stopover in Madrid. These destination countries do not require a visa from sub-Saharan citizens to fly. Once the plane – the vast majority of them from the official Moroccan airline, Royal Air Maroc – lands in Madrid for the stopover, the migrants tear up their passports to ask for international protection.

Government sources assure that they have not yet found the explanation for why this “fraudulent use” has now begun to be made, as the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, called it. But the truth is that this method dates back to last summer. During the summer months, the National Police detected the first increase in travelers seeking to access Spain using the asylum office at Barajas airport. First there were Somalis with Kenyan passports – previously purchased from mafias that traffic in human beings – and then they were followed by Senegalese, Mauritanians, Malians, Moroccans…

And it is at this point that the situation began to overwhelm due to the lack of personnel to carry out the paperwork with which it is decided whether the request for international protection is accepted. Police sources confirm that what in normal situations could be resolved in about four days has been extended to fourteen. The legislation prohibits detaining asylum seekers, but their freedom of movement is limited. Therefore, during that time they are staying in rooms in which, at maximum peaks of crowding, up to 400 migrants have been crammed.

Once the request is resolved, people go to the reception system that depends on the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration. But until then they must remain in the rooms that have been expanded by the Interior due to criticism that, to a large extent, has been channeled by police unions and the Ombudsman. Three judges also asked the department headed by Grande-Marlaska at the end of December to take “urgent measures.” But without a doubt, the biggest blows to the management of this unexpected migration crisis have come from the organization led by Ángel Gabilondo.

In his latest resolution, dated last Wednesday, the Ombudsman criticizes that the situation “has worsened significantly.” The increase in arrivals at the border post, it continues, has caused “a worsening of the living conditions of the rooms, unprecedented overcrowding and a deterioration in minimum hygiene and health standards.” The description given by the Ombudsman of what he observed during his visit on January 19 does not skimp on details: “The women and some minors have been transferred to a room that lacks conditions […] there are not enough beds […] ] nor basic furniture such as chairs or tables so people are forced to eat on the mattresses or the floor itself […] the only shower has been out of service for two weeks, it lacks basic hygiene kits and materials feminine hygiene […] there are also no telephones enabled so they cannot maintain any contact with the outside world.”

With all this, Gabilondo concludes: “These people could allegedly be subjected to degrading treatment, undermining their moral integrity.”

The Government defends the measures it has been taking as the days have passed. The space for the asylum has been expanded by 47% thanks to a fourth room opened last Tuesday in Terminal 1 of Barajas with the capacity to house 162 people. The three remaining rooms are located in terminals 1, 2 and 4 Satellite and have a total area of ??1,067 square meters. The troops of the Provincial Immigration and Border Brigade of the National Police and the Asylum and Refuge Office have also been reinforced.

There are 54 agents distributed in shifts dedicated every day of the week to carrying out interviews at the border post, with the additional collaboration of two instructors from the Asylum and Refuge Office, in coordination and support functions.

Furthermore, after the Red Cross announced that it was abandoning the provision of its services at the airport due to health conditions, the Police have taken over the cleaning of the facilities with periodic disinfections. Something that has been harshly criticized by the Unified Police Union (SUP), which regrets that the agents are cleaning or dispensing medication to migrants due to the inaction of the NGOs.

The Government, according to ministerial sources, believes that the key to controlling the situation is to nip irregular arrivals in the bud by imposing transit visas on sub-Saharan citizens who fraudulently use stopovers in Madrid. Since last January 20, this requirement has been mandatory for migrants with a Kenyan passport, which has meant, according to police sources, that the number of asylum seekers of this nationality has decreased significantly.

The same will apply to those who have a Senegalese passport, but it will not be until the 19th of this month. At the moment, the Spanish embassy in Morocco has asked the Alawite authorities through a note verbale not to allow Senegalese nationals who stopover in Spain to board until a visa begins to be required. Given the decrease in the arrival of citizens with Senegalese passports, according to the same sources, the call to Rabat seems to have had an effect.

However, no one in the Interior considers this migration crisis – which adds to the one that has hit the Canary Islands since last summer – as closed. What’s more, there is fear in the ministry that there could be another unexpected surge if migrants from other countries for which a transit visa is not required prefer to opt for these flights to enter Spain rather than making the sea crossing in a canoe.