MADRID (AP) – Something seemed wrong with the guard inspecting sealed bags of poisonous ashes in the port of Melilla, one of Spain’s two small territories in North Africa. So he pulled out a knife, cut open the bag and found a motionless leg, confirming his suspicion that there was a person inside.
He lifted the leg several times and dropped it, without responding. A few moments passed. Suddenly the leg pulled back and a young man emerged from the ashes – scared and disoriented, but alive.
The disturbing scene from a video released by the Spanish vigilante on Monday highlighted the great efforts and risks migrants and asylum seekers are taking in their desperate efforts to reach Europe.
The survivor was one of 41 people who took shelter amid cargo in the port area of Melilla on Friday as they attempted to sneak aboard a ship that would take them across the Mediterranean to mainland Spain.
Four of them were discovered buried in recycling containers under glass bottles, some broken with sharp edges.
Surrounded by Morocco, the small enclaves of Melilla and nearby Ceuta have been targets for many African migrants for years. But the two areas are outside the Schengen area of free mobility in much of Europe, so many of them get stuck trying to reach European soil.
The port of Melilla, where trucks and containers embark on a journey to Spain that can take up to seven hours, offers many a way to escape. Some try to enter the gated area of the harbor by swimming there or hiding under vehicles, jumping on them when they slow down, or stopping outside the gates of the harbor.
Others try to climb the fences and walls, sometimes fall and get seriously injured.
Using search dogs and microphones to detect heartbeats, police often find people hiding among cargo, from containers to cement mixers. This year alone, the Guardia Civil said it has identified 1,781 migrants entering the security zone of the port of Melilla; last year there were 11,700.
Yet discoveries like last week’s are disturbing to the most experienced officers.
“We will never get used to it,” said Juan Antonio Martín, a spokesman for the Guardia Civil in Melilla.
Because the border between the North African areas of Spain and Morocco has been closed since the pandemic started in March, it is more difficult for migrants to slip in. According to the Spanish Ministry of the Interior, almost 1,500 people entered Melilla illegally last year, compared to more than 5,800 in 2019.
But those who tried to leave Melilla last week were already in the enclave, Martín said. They were unable to take the passenger ferries or the flights to reach the mainland, either because they had no travel documents or because they entered Spain illegally at all.
Their nationality was not released, but the spokesman said most were of Moroccan descent.
While Morocco’s closure of the land border with Ceuta and Melilla came on the heels of years of intensifying border security, which had already led to a major drop in illegal crossings, Spain’s Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean are the most important landing point. for people fleeing North and West Africa to Europe.
Last year, about 23,000 people reached the archipelago, most of them plucked from the waters by the Spanish Maritime Rescue Service, and more than 500 died or disappeared in the attempt.
And there too, rescue workers sometimes faced the unthinkable. In December, the Spanish newspaper El País reported how a 14-year-old from Nigeria clung to the helm of an oil tanker for two weeks before being found by a patrol boat near the port of Las Palmas, on the island of Gran Canaria.
Brito reported from Barcelona, Spain.