Barcelona requests same treatment for Open Arms migrants as those on Aquarius

The Barcelona city council is to ask the Spanish government to offer the 60 migrants rescued from drowning near Libya on Saturday by the Catalan NGO Proactiva Open Arms ship the same treatment as that given to the 630 people saved by the Aquarius, which was granted safe harbour in Valencia two weeks ago.

Stranded in the Mediterranean for over a week after being turned away by Italy and Malta, the case of the rescue ship run by the French charities, SOS Méditerranée and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), attracted widespread coverage from international media outlets.

Spain’s new president Pedro Sánchez offered the Aquarius safe harbor in Valencia. In total, some 2,300 people were deployed in Valencia to help welcome the ships, including volunteers and Red Cross professionals, as well as translators and lawyers.

Despite initial plans to put the migrants in detention centers (CIEs), they ended up receiving a 45-day allowance to stay in Spain and either request asylum or apply for residency. The Spanish government insisted this was an “exceptional” measure.

Human rights groups in Catalonia and Spain have condemned the poor treatment received by migrants in the detention centers, and have repeatedly called for them to be closed down.

The 60 people saved by Proactiva Open Arms are due to arrive in Barcelona on Wednesday, after Italy and Malta refused permission for the ship to dock. Italy’s new government, with far-right leader Matteo Salvini as its interior minister, has recently rejected several refugee rescue ships seeking safe harbor in the country.

The Catalan Commission for Refugees (CEAR) has warned that the number of asylum seekers arriving in Catalonia in 2018 will continue to grow, and it could even triple from last year, when 3,900 people asked for international protection.

The rise of refugees in Catalonia reflects the upward trend in Spain, which saw a record-breaking figure of 31,120 requests for protection in 2017, twice as many as the previous year. For the first time, the number of asylum seekers arriving in Spain surpassed the average rate in European Union countries as a whole.

“We need to rethink asylum and migration policies in our country to abide by human rights principles,” said Estel·la Pareja, CEAR director. She stressed that now the time is coming for Catalonia to “really show it’s a welcoming society.”