asylum

Minister criticizes "opaque" nature of Spanish evacuations for giving priority to army collaborators 

Catalonia will take in 208 of the 1,700 refugees granted asylum in Spain following the Taliban takeover

Monday sees 26-year-old student's second asylum attempt on grounds of political persecution by Iranian authorities

Catalan social affairs minister picks up tips in Germany during visit to Patrick Henry Village refugee center in Heidelberg

Catalan Commission for Refugees expresses "great disappointment" over policies of Pedro Sánchez government

Commission for Refugees hopes Catalan people will show they are “a welcoming society”

Ten Kurdish people from Iran were found this morning hidden in a lorry in Lliçà d’Amunt, a village 30 kilometres from Barcelona, during a delivery route. According to the Catalan Secretary for Equality, Migration and Citizenship, Oriol Amorós, they are four minors, an adult woman and five adult men who had probably paid somebody to take them to England. Although Amorós said that “there are still doubts” about when they entered the lorry and what exactly their route was, the Government “will do everything in its power” to “give them asylum, regardless of their situation”. Moreover, bearing in mind that the migrants come from Iran, belong to the Kurdish minority and that “their human rights were being threatened”, they could have “recourse to the right of asylum and Catalonia would be able to take them in”.  

Three Syrian families, including 4 minors, make up the 10 refugees which will be relocated to Catalonia. They are part of a group of 20 people which arrived this Tuesday in Madrid. 44 more people, expected to arrive on the 30^th of May, will follow this first group and 19 more will arrive on the 1^st of June. 67 more are due to arrive in Spain by the end of June. In addition, 50 more refugees from Italy will begin to be hosted in Spain shortly, of which 18 are already in Spain as part of a pilot programme. In total, 586 people will be relocated to Spain by the end of June, according to the current Spanish Minister for Home Affairs, Jorge Fernández Díaz. Thus, Spain will become the fourth European country in terms of number of refugees hosted, but so far it only hosts 18 refugees of the 16,000 it has agreed to relocate. 

Barcelona’s Mayor, Ada Colau, travelled to Brussels this Tuesday to report Spain’s “immoral”management regarding the refugee crisis, which she described as “deeply shaming”. According to Colau, citizens in Barcelona “are asking to be a host city”and “die of shame and outrage when they see images of Lesbos and Idomeni”. “We are part of the solution, we have expertise and are willing to help”she stated, but regretted that sometimes local governments “are not taken into account”. Together with other European mayors, Colau met the EU's migration Commissioner, Dimitris Avramopoulos, and the EU Commissioner for Regional Policy, Corina Cretu, and asked them to “listen to the local governments”. Avramopoulos assured that he “took note”of Colau’s demands but emphasised that EU support to local authorities is always “through the Member States”.

The project ‘Persecuted and Saved’ will tell the story of how 80,000 WW2 refugees escaped persecution and death through the Pyrenees mountains into Catalonia. The Israel Ambassador in Spain, Alon Bar, and the CEO of EL-AL - the main Israeli airline, Walter Wasercier, have already taken a key interest in the project, aiming to promote the history of the 20,000 Jews that used the mountains to escape from the Holocaust and obtain their freedom. The project is based in the Province of Lleida, in western Catalonia, around various historical sites, including refugee camps and mountain pathways used by fleeing refugees.

On Tuesday, the Catalan Government approved the International Protection Plan of Catalonia, which aims to protect people forced to leave their country for being persecuted. It is the first time Catalonia has its own legal instrument to face the issue of asylum seekers, displaced people and human trafficking victims. This new tool establishes the principles, measures and funding schemes to host and offer protection to people who fled their country due to a grounded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, membership of a social group, gender or sexual orientation. Among other things, the Plan encourages issuing new proposals to improve the legal status of these people, offer them better training, improve their reception, integration and participation.