One year since massive demonstration urging Spain to accept more refugees

Exactly one year ago, the movement-turned-platform ‘Casa Nostra, Casa Vostra’ (or ‘Our Home, Your Home’ in English) put on a massive demonstration. On February 18, 2017, more than 160,000 took to the streets to demand that Spain take in more refugees. At the time, Spain had only taken in 516 of the 10,500 established in the EU distribution scheme, with a deadline of two years to complete. 

This Sunday February 18, the ‘Casa Nostra, Casa Vostra’ organization met up once more, a year later, to hold a talk reflecting on the changes that occurred. Held at the CCCB cultural center in Barcelona, this event featured public personalities who participated in the 2017 march, as well as refugees, members of grassroots groups, as well as representatives from the Catalan Government and the Barcelona Town Hall.

Notoriously absent was the Spanish government, with a chair reserved for a representative of the executive left vacant during the act. This is also one of the entities that received the most criticism in evaluating the steps taken to ease the refugee crisis in the last year, along with the European Union.

According to data released by the Ministry of Interior, in 2017 more than 32,000 people have asked for asylum in Spain, of which 10% are calculated to have done so in Catalonia, which currently holds 1,148 people going through the asylum-seeking process.