Abstract
From a comparative vantage point, few refugees arrived in Spain during the long summer of migration. Although a strong pro-refugee movement developed, it had an important internal variability. We study varying local-level political opportunities, comparing municipalities governed by movement-connected parties with others run by more traditional forces. We analysed the exceptional situation of Barcelona, where there is not only more popular mobilisation, but activism is also more protest-oriented than in other places. In contrast, Ceuta and Melilla are highly securitised cases with very closed opportunities for mobilisation. In between, we found mixed results for Andalusia and Galicia: although the presence of allies in office opens discursive opportunities for movement actors, it does not necessarily translate into de facto policies and stronger local networks of grassroots activism.
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See, for example, the Refugees Welcome survey by Amnesty International: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/05/refugees-welcome-survey-results-2016/. Another example, in the words of a local activist from Cádiz, is the following: ‘a few days ago, the UNHCR representative in Spain was here. In recent months they have delivered a campaign to collect signatures for a petition. They had collected over 1.5 million in total. 500,000 came from Spain, by far the country that had signed the most’ (Interview S18).
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This SMM activist goes on: ‘Every now and then there was a proposal to call for a macromanifestation. It seemed their objective was to assemble one million people, take a picture of a crowded city centre, but this could have not been done’ (Interview S11).
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An analyst from Open Migration puts it this way: ‘today, fluxes have changed and barely a few hundred people attempt to escape via the western route. The crossing to Gran Canaria is too dangerous, the patrols too frequent, leading sub-Saharan migrants to head north instead, towards Ceuta and Melilla…’ (Lanni 2016).
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In the words of a local activist from Cádiz, ‘when there was bad weather (i.e. strong wind coming from the east-side of the strait), nobody used to dare to cross, but now they do it to avoid such pushbacks. With bad weather conditions, the Moroccan patrol boats stay and the immigrants try to take advantage of this’ (Interview S18).
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See EFE (2014).
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See EFE (2016).
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The 2014 case has to do with a number of sub-Saharan immigrants who tried to reach the Tarajal beach in Ceuta by swimming. At 7 a.m., while it was still dark, the Spanish police used anti-riot material to prevent migrants from entering into Spain, firing rubber balls and smoke canisters from the Spanish land. As a result, at least 15 people died (some survivors talk about 87). See the award-winning documentary Tarajal (2016) by Metromunster—Metromunster is a social company made up of activists who met in the Indignados squares in Barcelona.
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Alcalde, J., Portos, M. (2018). Refugee Solidarity in a Multilevel Political Opportunity Structure: The Case of Spain. In: della Porta, D. (eds) Solidarity Mobilizations in the ‘Refugee Crisis’. Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71752-4_6
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