Spain asks Morocco to control the "patera planes" of its national airline company

Gema Peñalosa Madrid

Madrid

Updated Tuesday, January 30, 2024-02:40

• Interior Riot police are deployed in Barajas due to the chaos in the asylum wards

• Consequences Fights, 'signing' of migrants and roguery

Spain seeks the complicity of Morocco to try to alleviate the crisis of asylum seekers that has been suffocating the

Barajas airport

for more than two weeks. The overcrowding of more than 400 people in the terminal has forced the mediation of the Minister of the Interior - a senior police officer - of the Spanish Embassy in the Alawite kingdom with the authorities in Rabat.

After being alerted by several Spanish commissioners of the massive arrival of migrants through

Royal Air Maroc

- the Moroccan national company that, according to Barajas agents, is the one with the largest number of asylum seekers -, the liaison officer has acted. His task was to notify Rabat, focusing on the airline. Sources familiar with these procedures revealed that the request to the Moroccan Government involves informing Royal Air Maroc that its planes are used "as a boat" and that its daily flights to Barajas airport are considered "a hot route."

Two weeks ago, coinciding with the first symptoms of the asylum seeker crisis at the airport, senior police officers in Spain decided that intervention at the highest level was necessary. They informed the Minister of the Interior of the Embassy in Morocco of the massive influx of people arriving in Barajas from Casablanca and conveyed to him the need for the Aluite kingdom to be on notice.

Fernando Grande-Marlaska

meets today with the new Spanish ambassador to Morocco,

Enrique Ojeda

, who takes office with the biggest asylum crisis in Spain in memory.

The Police maintain that the majority of people who request international protection arrive in Madrid from flights from Casablanca. According to the agents, during the trip - the destination is visa-free countries such as Bolivia or Brazil - the migrants destroy their documentation and when stopping in Barajas they request asylum. They have detected that the company charters between two and four flights daily from

Mohamed VI

airport to Madrid. People from different African countries travel in them. Far from slackening, the number of petitioners for international protection remains constant, meaning that the rooms designated for this are overwhelmed (yesterday the Ministry of the Interior opened one more), displacing the rest of the migrants to occupy the public areas of the terminal.

Presence of riot police

Overcrowding has led to the first fights between different groups, which has made the presence of the

Rapid Intervention Unit

(UIP) - the riot police - necessary, as

EL MUNDO

reported . The presence of these agents at the Barajas airport precipitated a fight on Saturday. The scene of the fight was T4 satellite, the airport transit area where nearly 200 migrants have settled. It was the travelers who, eye sources explain, had to sound the alarm. The shouting and pushing between a large number of them necessitated the presence of agents from the National Police, the Civil Guard and even terminal security personnel. Between all of them, they managed to reduce them. It was then that they resolved the need to have riot police.

Of particular concern are the differences between groups of Senegalese and Moroccans given the virulence with which they try to resolve their differences in the terminal. The majority of disputes occur over control of the territory, as revealed by airport sources consulted by this newspaper. Who occupies a certain section of the hallway to spend the night or spend the day is another focus of confrontation due to the lack of space in common areas.

The last three nights, more than a hundred people have had to sleep on cardboard on the floor in the T4 transit area. The Police do not trust that the new room will alleviate the collapse situation. The issue of cleaning continues to be a pending issue for the Interior. The collapse has also forced approvals for asylum procedures to be granted “automatically.” In January, 864 applications were processed.