Another flashpoint has emerged in Europe’s long-simmering migrant crisis. Torre Pacheco, a small town in southern Spain, has been the scene of days of fighting between right-wing groups and mainly Moroccan migrants. While a tentative peace has been restored, tensions remain.
On 9 July, a 68-year-old local man, Domingo Tomas, was confronted by three young men during an early morning walk. One of the trio – all were described as being of ‘Moroccan origin’ and in their early 20s – brutally beat him. Images of Tomas’s bloodied and bruised face quickly went viral.
Agitators descended on Torre Pacheco in the days afterwards. Calls for a ‘Maghrebi hunt’ – essentially, a hunt for North African immigrants – spread on far-right forums. On the night of 11 July, thugs clashed with masked Moroccan youths, leaving several people injured and a trail of damage. More fighting and vandalism – including the destruction of a kebab shop owned by a Muslim local – took place over the following nights.
Order was largely restored on 14 July after police stopped cars carrying weapons from entering Torre Pacheco. Fourteen arrests have been made since the unrest began and a heavy police presence remains in the town.
Politicians from Spain’s left-wing government, led by the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, have rightly condemned the far-right thuggery. Indeed, there appear to be strong grounds to think that extremist groups played a role in stoking up much of the violence that unfolded. Yet the government has had little to say about the organised violence from the other side of those clashes. Despite police ordering people to stay indoors, some migrants clashed with police and possibly also locals – not just with the organised far right.
Leading politicians have notably failed to address concerns about thorny issues like migrant crime. To take just one example, the left-wing Podemos party used the riots as a pretext to call for the prosecution of Santiago Abascal, leader of the hard-right Vox party, for inciting hatred against immigrants. Abascal certainly did not mince his words after the attack on the elderly Tomas, urging ‘immediate deportations’ to stem Spain’s ‘criminal migrant invasion’. But most Spaniards would recognise Podemos’s demand to have him arrested as rank opportunism. After all, Vox sits well above Podemos in the national polls, with the gap only widening.
Unsurprisingly, part of Vox’s growing support lies in its rigorous focus on immigration, which now ranks as the second-biggest concern for Spanish citizens. Vox has even endorsed the extreme, hard-right notion of ‘remigration’, and promised to deport eight million foreigners from Spain if it wins office. To Vox and its supporters, the Torre Pacheco riots keep the public’s attention fixed on an issue they see as their route to power.
To other political parties, however, the riots are only proof of the need to double down on their current, deeply unpopular policies. Podemos’s Ione Belarra – a government minister – called for the ‘immediate legalisation of everyone living here’ as a way to stop the ‘racist violence’. Belarra also took aim at the police, and told reporters that ‘we have a serious problem with the infiltration of neo-fascist ideology within the state security forces’. Spain’s police union has since described her accusations as ‘extremely serious’ and threatened her with legal action.
None of this comes remotely close to addressing the cause of the recent outbreak of violence. Torre Pacheco’s North African population has boomed in recent decades. There is an economic reason for much of this – the surrounding region of Murcia relies heavily on agricultural labourers, many of whom come from North Africa.
However economically necessary this migration might be, the breakneck speed of it, and the consequent demographic change, has unsurprisingly been a source of disquiet. Indeed, the population of Torre Pacheco – approximately 40,000 – has doubled in just 30 years. A third of its population is foreign born, and half of those migrants are Moroccan. The Spanish government’s promise to grant citizenship to 300,000 undocumented migrants each year, until 2027, has only inflamed an already growing hostility to mass immigration.
Going by the evidence so far, however, the authorities have shown little willingness to tackle this burning problem. By failing to do so, they are digging their own graves. Not only are we likely to see more unrest of the type we’ve seen in Torre Pacheco, we’re also likely to see their hard-right opponents get closer and closer to power.
When issues around immigration are not tackled in a firm but humane manner, we can hardly be surprised when those offering more extreme solutions profit. The unrest in Spain is a warning to Europe. What happened here could happen anywhere.
William McGee is a writer.
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