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IMMIGRATION

Spain smashes Madrid airport migrant smuggling ring

Spanish police said Thursday they have smashed an international ring which smuggled some 200 Senegalese nationals into Europe via Madrid airport, which has been overwhelmed recently by an influx of asylum seekers.

Published: 15 February 2024 15:38 CET
Spain smashes Madrid airport migrant smuggling ring
Migrants sleep in the transit area of the Madrid Barajas airport terminal. Photo: AFP

Officers arrested 12 alleged members of the ring, which had created a manual that outlined in detail how to request asylum in Spain by falsely claiming to be a minor from war-torn nations like Mali or Ethiopia, police said in a statement.

Among those arrested is the suspected leader of the network.

The gang instructed the migrants to fly to Casablanca in Morocco, and then buy a plane ticket to several destinations in South America with a layover in Madrid.

“Once they boarded in Casablanca with their original passport, they tore up their passport inside the plane,” the statement said.

On arrival in Madrid, they requested asylum and since they claimed to by minors, they were not detained at the airport but were instead sent to protection centres across Madrid, it added.

The network then picked them up and transported them by car to Belgium, France or Germany, or to a bus station where they could travel on their own to another destination.

Nearly 200 people entered Europe this way, a police spokeswoman said. The suspects – 11 Senegalese and a Spanish national – were arrested in the Spanish capital and in the southeastern city of Alcoy, she added.

READ ALSO: Madrid airport overwhelmed by asylum seekers

Madrid airport, Spain’s busiest, has experienced a surge in asylum requests in recent months, which has forced the authorities to open two new rooms to house them following complaints over overcrowding and poor hygiene in the existing spaces.

The government also started requiring a transit visa for nationals from Senegal and Kenya who wish to travel through a Spanish airport to try to curb the influx.

More asylum claims were made at the airport in January – 864 – than during all of 2022, the last year for which official figures are available, when 767 were filed.

Spain is one of the main gateways for immigration into Europe. A total of 56,852 undocumented migrants entered Spain last year, an 82.1 percent jump from 2022, mainly due to a record number landing in the Canary Islands.

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STATS

Spain’s population inches closer to 49 million with 900 new residents a day

Amid falling birth rates and an ageing society, foreigners are pushing the Spanish population to record highs.

Published: 10 May 2024 09:31 CEST
Spain's population inches closer to 49 million with 900 new residents a day

The Spanish population increased by almost 1000 people per day to start off the year, spurred almost entirely by the arrival of migrants.

Spain’s population increased by 82,346 people during the first quarter of 2024, a rate of a little over 900 per day on average, meaning that the total population reached 48,692,804 on April 1st, the highest figure in history.

This is according to population data recently released by Spain’s National Statistics Institute (INE).

In annual terms, the total estimated population growth was 459,615 people in the last year, 0.95 percent overall, a slight slowdown after six consecutive quarters with inter-annual rates above 1 percent.

READ ALSO: Older and more diverse: What Spain’s population will be like in 50 years

These figures confirm the pre-existing trend that without the influx of immigrants, Spain’s population would be decreasing. This is largely due to the combination of an ageing population and declining birth rates. By 2035, around one in four (26.0 percent) of Spaniards are expected to be 65 or older. That figure is currently just 20.1 percent of the total population, and by 2050 it could rise to 30.4 percent.

This is compounded by the fact that fertility rate figures have all but flatlined in Spain. In 2023 Spain registered just 322,075 births, reflecting “a 2.0 percent fall on the previous year”, an INE statement said, with a spokesman confirming it was the lowest figure since records began in 1941.

Spain’s fertility rate is the second lowest in the European Union, with the latest figures from Eurostat showing there were 1.19 births per woman in 2021, compared with 1.13 in Malta and 1.25 in Italy.

A recent study by the Bank of Spain estimates that the country will need up to 25 million more immigrant workers by 2053 in order to combat demographic ageing and maintain the ratio of workers to pensioners in order to support the pension system.

READ ALSO:

During the first quarter of the year, the native Spanish population actually decreased by 3,338 while the foreign population increased by 85,684 people.

8,915,831 people, or 18.31 percent of the total population in Spain, were born in other countries.

The main nationalities of immigrants arriving in Spain were Colombian (39,200), Moroccan (26,000) and Venezuelan (22,600). In contrast, of those who left Spain in the first three months of the year, 10,000 were Spanish, 9,900 Moroccan and 8,000 Romanian.

On a regional level, in this period the population grew in 12 regions, as well as in the autonomous city of Melilla, and decreased in five regions and Ceuta.

The largest increases were in Madrid (+0.44 percent), Melilla (+0.40) and the Valencian Community (+0.36), while the population decreased in Aragón (-0.19 percent), Extremadura (-0.12), Castilla y León (-0.06 percent), Asturias (-0.05 percent), Cantabria (-0.03 percent) and Ceuta (0.02 percent).

With regards to year-on-year increases, population increased the most in the Valencian Community (+1.79 percent), Madrid (+1.72) and the Balearic Islands (+1.62) and only decreased in Extremadura, by 0.13 percent.

READ ALSO: Nearly half of Barcelona’s residents aged 20 to 39 are foreign

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