PROLOGUE: Strolling along the sidewalk, golden spring afternoon. A gentleman, walking very slowly, carries four seedlings in his hand.
A baby. It was just a baby.
Nabody, as identified by local media, was just 2 years old in March 2021 when she crossed the more than 600 kilometers between Dakhla, off the coast of Morocco, and the Canary Islands, in southern Spain.
He was traveling in a patera, a precarious vessel, little more than a canoe, with 51 other people – including eight children, as well as his mother and 13-year-old sister. It’s a two-day trip.
(To have an idea: in general, immigrants arrive by sea in small boats with little draft and without cover, those used for short journeys or transporting passengers from one side of a river to another, for example. Called pateras, cayucos or zodiacs (in the case of motorized boats), they are extremely obviously highly unsuitable for ocean crossings.
After two days at sea, Nabody, who was born in Mali, West Africa, arrived in Las Palmas, the main island of the Spanish archipelago of the Canary Islands, in serious condition, like other people traveling in the same boat.
Almost all the sick on board were women and children, which led the authorities to be suspicious of some male travelers who, as is not uncommon in such cases, might have deliberately appropriated the food rations.
After a cardiac arrest and five days in the hospital, Nabody passed away. At the time, his death reignited the discussion about African immigration on the continent. Politicians, doctors and NGOs came out to protest, denounce, complain.
In the Canary Islands alone, last year 28,000 immigrants arrived by sea. Spain, as has been the case for years, is one of the top European destinations for immigrants from the most diverse origins. In 2021, it was the third European country to receive more immigrants, behind only Germany and France.
Of the nearly 15,000 formal asylum applications registered in Spain in 2021, 9% came from Mali, a nation affected by jihadist conflicts for more than a decade. Then, as has been happening in recent years, come the Venezuelans and Colombians, with approximately 20% each.
There are more and more women and children among immigrants. Now, we also have to take into account the Ukrainians, whom I have come across frequently in Barcelona. They come without husbands and children of legal age, with children in their arms and many uncertainties.
In the case of women from traditionalist cultures, moreover, statistically not only do they escape conflicts, misery, wars; they are also fleeing forced marriages, gender-based violence and genital mutilation. They seek – like everyone else – a better life.
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If arriving in Spain in a homemade boat crossing oceans, storms and hunger seems like a crazy challenge, staying and living in a New Earth is not far behind.
In that sense, the statement made this week by the Catalan ombudsman (yes, here are those) Catalan, David Bondia, about improving the policies for welcoming young immigrants without families in Barcelona comes at a good time – if it goes beyond the nice words.
Barcelona, ​​land of beauty and opportunities – and, here and there, of young immigrants surviving precariously in occupied settlements, shacks, houses or old industrial warehouses.
It is estimated that there are currently more than 200 “menas” (abbreviated for Unaccompanied Foreign Minors) living on the streets or in “infravivendas” in the city. The term has gained a negative connotation in recent years, being associated in the popular imagination with the news about crimes committed by immigrants.
Bondia, a lawyer specializing in Human Rights, who in his recent inauguration of the position sold the concept of “human rights of proximity”, defended the adoption of more concrete measures to support young people in their process of transition to adulthood in a new parents.
Like Abad*, from Morocco, 21 years old. Rapper, talented, jumping around. Interviewed by a friend of mine for a documentary about the Menas, he has since disappeared. After the age of 18, the temporary homes offered by local social services no longer accept the Mena, and it’s every man for himself – too much.
Majid* from Ghana, also interviewed by my friend, is another example. Amiable and smiling by default, almost like a defensive pantomime, he doesn’t finish getting used to the loneliness and the difficulty of getting – and keeping – a job.
Every year, you need to renew your residence permit, and for that, you need a job, for which, in turn, you need a residence permit. Bag.
Right now, he works on a farm an hour from Barcelona for a meager salary, barely enough for a shared room and something to eat. Besides, her black skin color, vero, doesn’t make it easy to make friends or get a better job. Shit. Still, thank you, smile. It’s better here.
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Nabody: Frankly, I haven’t found the meaning of the name (if anyone knows, let me know). Curious – or not – sounds almost-Nobody/Nobody.
Almost, but no, and that wasn’t even his real name, as it turned out later. Anonymous life and death. He didn’t have time to put down roots in a new land and live the immigrant’s Ulysses syndrome, this mixture of homesickness and never-coming. Nobody, nobody.
* changed names
