https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12792/spain-mass-migration
Spain’s socialist government, under Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, has promised free healthcare to migrants and says it will investigate every asylum claim individually.
“[A] majority of irregular migrants rescued in the Central Mediterranean are most likely not refugees in the sense of the Geneva Convention, given that some 70 % come from countries or regions not suffering from violent conflicts or oppressive regimes.” — From a 2017 report by the European Commission.
“We have created refugee shelters for tens of thousands of people, but there are hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants in our country. This has heavily impaired the security situation. They include terrorists, criminals, and human traffickers who do not care about human rights. It’s horrible.” — Libyan leader Fayez al-Sarraj.
On July 26, some 800 migrants from sub-Saharan Africa violently stormed the border fence between Morocco, where they were living illegally, and the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. According to Spanish authorities:
“In an attempt to stop the Guardia Civil getting close to the break-in area, the migrants … [pelted] officers with plastic containers of excrement and quicklime, sticks and stones, as well as using aerosols as flame-throwers.”
Many people were wounded in the clash, and 602 migrants succeeded in entering Spanish territory.
Two weeks earlier, the rescue ship Aquarius, operated by the French NGO Sos Méditerranée, picked up 629 Sub-Saharan migrants off the coast of Libya. After both Italy and Malta refused to take in the migrants, with Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini declaring, “No to human trafficking, no to the business of illegal immigration,” Spain welcomed the ship, and two other vessels carrying illegal migrants, at the port of Valencia.