Spain’s Government Is Turning a Blind Eye to Killings at Its Border
In June, police killed at least 37 people at the Moroccan-Spanish border at Melilla. Spain’s main parties have voted against an official inquest into the massacre — exposing the hollowness of the center-left government’s “progressive” credentials.
A woman holds a placard reading “37 dead in Melilla, progressive government responsible” during a demonstration in Madrid, Spain, on June 26, 2022. (Marcos del Mazo / LightRocket via Getty Images)
Along the seafront of Spain’s North African enclave Melilla, I meet Imran. A twenty-year-old from Chad, he is washing locals’ cars at €5 a vehicle. It’s early September, and the pristine Cárabos Beach largely resembles any other stretch of the Mediterranean coastline — from the open-air bars blasting reggaeton to the children playing in the waves. Yet also visible in the background is Melilla’s seven-meter-high border fence, marking one of only two land frontiers between the European Union and an African nation.
Like many Sudanese and Chadian nationals earning a living informally along the seafront, Imran is a survivor of last June’s Melilla massacre. According to international NGOs, at least thirty-seven people were killed by police when immigrants attempted to storm the Spanish-Moroccan border. But the figure of confirmed missing people, seventy-four, suggests the actual death toll could be much higher.
“We came to the wire together as a big group of 1,500 people,” Imran tells Jacobin. “But the police were ready for us. When we reached the border crossing, they surrounded us on both sides of the fence — the Moroccan police were on one side and the Spanish on the other.” He continues:
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