In the first 10 months of 2023, more than 43,000 migrants and refugees landed on the Spanish coasts. Most of them reached the Canary Islands in small boats known as pateras. The number far exceeds arrivals to the UK, whose shores have been reached by about 27,000 people in the same period. The disparity is even more striking considering Spain has a population of 48 million, in contrast with the 68 million in the UK.
People arriving by small boats are a minority in the immigration flow, and are not necessarily the ones who stay in Spain. About 15% of the Spanish population is foreign-born – the population is actually growing due to waves of new immigrants, mostly from Colombia, Morocco and Venezuela.
Yet Spain has not witnessed the same level of outrage and alarmist anti-immigration rhetoric we see in the UK, where politicians across the political spectrum and even journalists embrace the slogan “stop the boats’’ as a casual way to speak about desperate people trying to escape hardship. Unlike in the UK, in Spain net migration numbers are usually reported not as a negative, but as a welcome source of growth in a country with an ageing population.
Immigration has not become a central issue in Spain’s political debate, and the weaponised rhetoric of “invasion” is marginal, used primarily by the far-right party Vox. Vox has very limited power, with 12% of the vote in the most recent general election.
Vox gained some traction in 2018 by focusing its campaign on small towns in southern Spain with high immigrant populations, touting anti-immigration messages and spreading lies about migrants on social media. But the party has recently lost ground even in those places. Vox’s leader, Santiago Abascal, has defended immigration from Latin America while advocating for restrictions on the rights of people coming from “Muslim cultures,” as a proposal presented in parliament this autumn put it. But Abascal is routinely more focused on the backlash against Catalan separatists, feminism and the fight against the climate crisis.
Perhaps because it is not constantly foregrounded by politicians, migration is not a major public concern: only 2% of the population considers immigration the main problem for Spain and about 12% mention it as one of the key issues, according to the latest survey data. Interviews were conducted in November, after a month of record arrivals of migrants and refugees. Politicians, unemployment, the economy and public health ranked higher as sources of concern for citizens in Spain.
The emergence of Vox and its most aggressive rhetoric may explain the growing polarisation around the issue since 2018. Ideology may be to some extent a predictor of whether individuals perceive the benefits of immigration.
But overall, Spain maintains a positive view of migration. Most Spaniards have a positive attitude to immigrants, interact with migrants socially and believe integration has been successful at the local level. This may have something to do with the history of Spanish migration to richer countries in Europe (including the last wave of young people who emigrated in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis) and with a common rejection of Spanish nationalism. Politicians have not clung to the issue as they have in other European countries. Beyond the far right, xenophobia has been associated with some local nationalists in Catalonia and the Basque Country.
The Spanish government’s handling of irregular arrivals, however, has been far from exemplary, as deaths in the Mediterranean keep happening, including under Spanish watch. More than 2,000 deaths in the Mediterranean have been related to operations to push back asylum seekers, with the support of the EU border control agency Frontex, according to a Guardian investigation in 2021. Spanish express deportations have been controversially upheld by the European court of human rights. In June 2022, at least 37 people died in a crush while trying to cross the border fence in Melilla, a Spanish enclave in Morocco. Police officers were also accused of beating or failing to assist migrants. In December 2022, the Spanish prosecutor’s office closed an investigation into the actions of the interior ministry and police force with the argument that the Moroccan authorities carried full responsibility. Despite the controversy, the Spanish interior minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, has just been confirmed in his role.
And while the EU is not trying to send asylum seekers to Rwanda as the UK is, it has its own history of shadowy returns-for-cash deals with countries such as Libya, Turkey and Tunisia. EU countries, including Spain, have not consistently prioritised human rights and lack a clear strategy to improve conditions in countries of origin. However, Spain continues to abide by the rulings of the European court of human rights and refrains from portraying every person born in a different country as an outsider and a threat, as is often the case in British politics and media.
There are many shortcomings in Spain’s migration policy, including growing pockets of immigrant poverty that could become a bigger issue if public policy ignores them. But extreme messages against migrants or non-nationals have not hijacked the public discourse.
Following a challenging year with record arrivals in the Canary Islands, the Socialist party won the most votes in this region in July’s general election. Vox, the party campaigning on more restrictive measures against irregular migration, came fifth in the region and lost votes. Harsh rhetoric against migrants and foreigners is not really paying off in Spain. It is a matter of public responsibility for politicians and journalists to keep it this way.
María Ramírez is a journalist and deputy managing editor of elDiario.es, a news outlet in Spain
