María Ramírez underestimates the security of migrants at Spain’s borders (Spain does not share Britain’s migrant panic; “Stop the Boats” has few fans here, December 18) . While it is encouraging that political sentiment on immigration is generally more positive in Spain than in the UK, minimizing the militarization of Spain’s Mediterranean borders and wider EU border operations could fundamentally change the situation. It will distort it.
The result will be thousands of deaths, as we detailed in a recent long read (“Weapons of Mass Immigration”: How States Exploit Immigration Policy Failures, December 14). , the professionalization of smuggling networks, and the escalation of political brinkmanship. Around the border.
Spanish politicians are also happy to play their part. When Morocco forcibly corralled migrants at the Melilla border in 2022, sparking deadly clashes, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez denounced it as an “attack on Spain’s territorial integrity.” For example, the kind of language used by Suella Braverman. The Rwanda project, which has been cited negatively next to the EU’s deportation policy, is terrible, but it has yet to get off the ground. In contrast, the EU has for years trained and financed border police-cum-Libyan militias that violently push back, detain and torture migrants along the central Mediterranean route.
Spanish operations along the coasts of North and West Africa have long set a model of outsourcing border control, with violence conveniently left to North African forces. The words may be soft-spoken, but Spain’s suffering is real.
ruben anderson and david keene
Oxford