Europe’s Shame

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What is happening right now in Ceuta and Melilla is shameful, it brings no credit to any of us. The anomolous position of these two Spanish North African enclaves should have been resolved long ago. As an urgent interim measure some sort of dual-sovereignty agreement between Spain and Morocco (such as that which was applied between France and Spain in the case of Andorra) should be thrashed out as a matter of urgency. I will try and find the time for a longer post on Afoe later.

Hundreds of African immigrants stormed a fence surrounding the tiny Spanish enclave of Melilla on the Moroccan coast on Tuesday, trying to climb over on makeshift ladders before being repelled by police in riot gear.

Spanish authorities called it the biggest ever mass attempt to breach the fence guarding the coastal enclave, about 100 miles from the Spanish mainland across the Mediterranean. At least 19 people suffered minor injuries.

Of the 500 who stormed the enclave, some 100 immigrants, all from sub-Saharan Africa, managed to break through and enter Spanish territory. They were taken to a police station for identification, said Narciso Serrano, from the Interior Ministry in Melilla.

Serrano said police found some 270 ladders made of tree branches in the area.

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About Edward Hugh

Edward 'the bonobo is a Catalan economist of British extraction. After being born, brought-up and educated in the United Kingdom, Edward subsequently settled in Barcelona where he has now lived for over 15 years. As a consequence Edward considers himself to be "Catalan by adoption". He has also to some extent been "adopted by Catalonia", since throughout the current economic crisis he has been a constant voice on TV, radio and in the press arguing in favor of the need for some kind of internal devaluation if Spain wants to stay inside the Euro. By inclination he is a macro economist, but his obsession with trying to understand the economic impact of demographic changes has often taken him far from home, off and away from the more tranquil and placid pastures of the dismal science, into the bracken and thicket of demography, anthropology, biology, sociology and systems theory. All of which has lead him to ask himself whether Thomas Wolfe was not in fact right when he asserted that the fact of the matter is "you can never go home again".

3 thoughts on “Europe’s Shame”

  1. A nitpick, Andorra co-sovereignship accords do not involve Spain, but the Bishopry of Urgell. I think Andorra status is in fact older than both the states of Spain and France as we know them.

    DSW

  2. A nitpick, Andorra co-sovereignship accords do not involve Spain, but the Bishopry of Urgell. I think Andorra status is in fact older than both the states of Spain and France as we know them.

    DSW

  3. Andorra is a sovereign state, whose head of state is a pair of foreign entities.

    But the EU must never ever ask a member to give up territory which is voluntarily a part of that member. In fact, the EU should aid members in their defense. Additionally any member has a right and Spain being a member of the Schengen treaty has a duty to defend its borders. Obviously these were ugly scenes, but once we have decided that our common good requires strict border controls, we cannot fail to implement that once we see the consequences nor can we put the burden onto Spain and make indecent demands of a member.

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