My friend Andrew had less of a pleasant and efficient time than me at his polling station on Sunday. Despite flourishing both a census card and his ID, he was told he didn’t exist so couldn’t vote. He had to traipse across town to two separate offices to get a certificate of his entitlement. Faced with this, the small army behind the desk, decided to huddle and revisit the electoral rolls, where they finally found him under Foreigners: EU Community Citizens. A computer might have been quicker. Provided they didn’t take the usual step of entering his second forename as his surname when beginning the search.

Standing back from the detail, it looks as if, in terms of voting percentages and council seats, the big loser in the Galicia municipal elections was the Galician Nationalist Party [the BNG]. And in terms of increased power, the winner appears to be . . . the Galician Nationalist Party. This is simply because the socialist PSOE party gained seats in places where it can now form a coalition administration with the ‘rejected’ BNG to replace or keep out the majority-voted PP party. Depending on where you’re standing, this is clearly undemocratic or manifestly in tune with the will of the people. Or just more evidence of Spain’s increasingly fissiparous nature.

More locally, I read this morning that the strengthened PSOE may well demand that Pontevedra’s BNG mayor hand over the reins to the socialist leader. And even closer to home in Poio, there are rumours the PSOE will not back the BNG mayor for another term. Exciting times. At least for those of us living in Chickenland.

I had a curry dinner last night for some teacher friends and my daughters. As everyone is fluent in both English and Spanish, it was a an evening of non-stop vibrant conversation. Even more so when in Spanish than when in English, if this is possible. Or perhaps my Spanish guests just spoke even louder in their own language. Anyway, the real fun started after dinner, when they took advantage of my piano and the guitar. Is there anyone in Spain who can’t play the latter? And is it true there’s no one more industrious than a Spaniard when it comes to doing something he/she enjoys? Learning to play an instrument, for example. Or just talking. The only sad aspect of the evening is that we apparently didn’t make enough noise to annoy Bawling Tony, who’s back from the sea for 6 long weeks.

I posted a compilation on Racism in Spain recently. Apropos, here’s a very valid comment from Ben at Notes from Spain on the subject. This has inspired me, if that’s the word, to dedicate my latest 3 year compilation to IMMIGRATION. Though the main reason may be that I know this won’t take me too long and I’m a little fragile this morning . . .

2004

A high court in Andalucia yesterday pronounced that the owner of a brothel was obliged to include his employees in the social security system and, thus, pay taxes on their income. The judges made an analogy with illegal immigrant labourers and so the inference to be drawn is that brothel owners have this obligation even though prostitution itself is against the law. Three of the twelve judges went out on a limb and said they had misgivings about the brothel owner being able to dictate working hours [and practices?] to female employees. I wonder whether he will be similarly liable for accidents at work, whatever these might include. Pregnancy, for example. The mind boggles…

The Spanish government has said that they may issue papers to a large chunk of illegal immigrants, allowing them to work as domestic servants. This points up one of the fascinating aspects of Spanish society – viz. that, although per capita income is not high up the EU list, most people here employ a cleaner or maid, even when here is only one salary coming into the house. Perhaps things will change if the illegals become legal, start paying tax and price themselves out of business.

In truth, the Spanish probably would be more racist if the immigrants already here were spread more widely throughout the country. On the other hand, the almost-daily reports of drowned Africans who didn’t make it alive it to the Spanish coast surely provoke at least a degree of compassion.

Spain has a big problem with illegal Moroccan immigrants arriving on the south coast in rafts, many of them dead. But it surprised me to learn today that these comprise only 10% of ilegales from that country. The rest arrive with French visas. So, it’s not only the UK which receives refugees posted on, as it were, from France. Sometimes you just have to admire the French for their total lack of principle.

Tension appears to be growing between the Autonomous Communities [regions] and Madrid over who pays for the cost of educating ‘foreigners’ who come to live in Spain. This seemed to me a strange thing for them to be fighting about until I realised that ‘foreign’ is a code word for ‘immigrant’, which is itself a code word for ‘North African’.

2005

The latest census figures reveal a Spanish population of around 44 million and a “foreigners” component of 8%, or 3.5 million. The biggest group of these is the Moroccans [usually referred to by the codeword ‘immigrants’], followed by Ecuadorians, Romanians, Colombians and Brits [at 225,000]. The fastest rate of growth is amongst the Rumanians. I wouldn’t have thought there were that many windscreens to wash or cigarette lighters to sell at traffic lights.

My daughter in Madrid is now into her fourth month of getting herself registered at the town hall so she can secure the state health cover we failed to get here in Pontevedra. Having read that 600,000 illegal immigrants are being allowed to register under an amnesty which ends very soon, I suggested to Faye it might be quicker if she got herself down to Andalucia and sat on a beach until she was arrested.

Spain’s proximity to Africa means it’s a favoured target for illegal immigrants. These arrive by raft and boat on the south and east coasts in their thousands, many of them already dead. As if this weren’t enough of a problem, Spain also has 2 enclaves [decidedly not ‘colonies’ like Gibraltar] in Africa. Over the past 2 nights around 500 Africans have stormed the security fences around one of these in an attempt to get over them using makeshift ladders. Given that some of them succeeded, I guess the prospect is of more of these desperate sallies.

Another 600 Africans rushed the fences around one of the Spanish enclaves last night and 300 of them managed to get onto Spanish soil. My understanding is Spain can’t now send them back directly but must either absorb them or go through due process, hampered by the fact the illegal immigrants never have any papers revealing their country of origin. Spain has again appealed to the EU to throw money at the problem. And, right on cue, a Moroccan politician has said what Africa needs is a ‘real Marshall Plan’.

The Moroccan government continues to find simple solutions to the problem of thousands of sub-Saharan Africans using its territory as a launching pad into Spain’s enclaves. Three days ago they started cutting down the forests near the fences and two days ago they took twelve hundred poor souls into the desert near the Algerian border and dumped them there. Following international protests, they’ve retrieved them, pending further strokes of genius.

The Moroccan government continues to earn brickbats for its treatment of the illegal immigrants who launched themselves – unsuccessfully – at the Spanish fences around Melilla and Ceuta in North Africa. Having dumped more than a thousand of them in the middle of the desert near Algeria, they’ve now responded to the storm of protests by driving them in a convoy to the other end of the country, near the Western Sahara.

The President – Mr Zapatero – could probably do with some domestic favour right now. For recent surveys suggest the Spanish public is increasingly critical of him for perceived weakness in the face of illegal immigrants, an unfriendly Moroccan government and the Catalans who are trying to weaken their relationship with the state. Calls are naturally being made for a change in the law so as to allow illegal immigrants to be sent straight back. Given that the Spanish government is almost certainly barred from taking unilateral action, it may not be long now before the Spanish find there’s more to being in the EU than an endless flow of grants and subsidies from north to south.

The EU Justice Commissioner has warned there are 40,000 people in Algeria and Morocco waiting to launch themselves at the fences around Ceuta and Melilla. Perhaps they’ve heard today’s report that half of the 900,000 jobs created in Spain last year went to ‘foreigners’. Or that Mr Zapatero last year gave residence rights to over 700,000 illegal immigrants, a step that was immediately criticised by the German government as an open invitation for more of the same.

There was a picture in yesterday’s press of French and Spanish politicians smiling broadly after agreeing they’ll seek a change in EU laws on illegal immigration. Below the surface things are not so chummy. France is furious that many of the French-speaking African illegals recently given the right to stay in Spain have already crossed the Pyrenees. I suspect the real purpose of the meeting was to stop Mr ‘Bambi’ Zapatero continuing with his nice-guy, soft-touch policies.

Today Mr Zapatero tried to persuade his EU colleagues that the borders between its African enclaves and Morocco are really those of Europe and not just Spain. I suspect he had a hard time. The argument that these aren’t really colonies but part of Spain possibly played less well at the summit than it does in Spain. But you can’t blame him for trying; the number of illegal immigrants coming into Spain exceeds those entering Germany, France and the UK put together. Only Italy comes close.

Well, Mr Zapatero came away from the summit with a commitment to double the budget for immigration measures. More likely ‘anti-immigration’ measures, I suspect. Mr Blair, meanwhile, came away with less than nothing. Or, to put it how the UK Daily Telegraph did this morning in a headline which probably didn’t appear in French papers - ‘Chirac wrecks summit’. In fact, not content with this, the French president promised to do the same at the November budget meeting, if anyone threatens the sacred cow of the ruinously expensive Common Agricultural Policy. On this, he can surely rely on the support of Spain, the second largest beneficiary after France. I wonder how long it will be before Mr Blair accepts there’s no Third Way in Europe, just naked national interest.

I read today that 50% of the sub-Saharans that get to Spain are bent on passing through to countries in which their language is spoken. The prime target is France. This must be very welcome news to President Chirac and his government, as they face the 11th consecutive night of rioting by disadvantaged young Frenchmen of African descent. No wonder they’re upset about President Zapatero’s policy of legalising the presence of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants in Spain.

The dreadful events in France are being followed here by possibly even more interest than elsewhere. One reason for this is that economic migrants from Spain 30-40 years ago tended to end up in the appalling Paris ghettos. So there’s more knowledge here of the situation than in other countries. Plus, Spain has its own large inflow of African immigrants and so is asking itself whether riots could happen here. Possibly not, as Spain’s immigration problem is of much more recent origin and so the problem doesn’t exist of 2^nd and 3^rd generation immigrants who are disaffected citizens. Or at least not yet.

You might think the bickering 25 members of the EU have enough on their plate without getting involved in even larger negotiations. But, no, they’ve all been meeting along with 10 other countries in a Mediterranean Summit in Barcelona. I suppose, if the Catalunian government had had their way, this would have been 11. Anyway, they were there to discuss the challenges of immigration and terrorism and they finally decided they were all against the latter. Or they would be, if they could only agree on a definition. You can tell just how a big a failure the event was from the conviction with which Mr Blair insisted it had been a huge success. I wonder if that man would now recognise reality if it jumped up and hit him in the face with a wet kipper.

2006

When asked what aspect of life worried them most at the end of 2005, 49% of the great Spanish public answered Unemployment. Second came Immigration, with 29%, followed by ETA terrorism. Only 3% felt very concerned by increasing regionalism/nationalism and a mere 2% plumped for the revision of the constitutional arrangements between Madrid and all the regions. Which all rather puts us fevered scribes in our place, doesn’t it.

For several years now, illegal immigrants have been arriving on Spain’s coasts in their thousands each year. Many of them don’t make it alive. Recently the numbers have risen significantly, particularly in respect of Mauritanian refugees trying to land in the Canary Islands. In fact, things have got so bad Galicia has even agreed to take a share of those who make it. The poor souls may find the weather a bit of a shock, though it was 29 in one city in today, the highest temperature in Spain.

According to the latest OECD factbook, the UK is not 'flooded' by immigrants. Greece, Canada and Spain top the list. Spain's ratio is 4 times greater, though I suspect there are definition differences since returning émigrés are regarded as immigrants there.

The Canary Islands were engulfed by the largest wave yet of illegal immigrants from down the west coast of Africa. Or at least by the lucky ones who survived the journey. The opposition party naturally alleges this is all a result of the government giving resident status to hundreds of thousands of ‘sinpapeles’ [paperless people] last year. And whose to say they’re wrong? The said government has, naturally, insisted this is a European and not just a Spanish problem and demanded assistance. On this, they are surely right; if you give the illegal immigrants residence and they immediately head north across the Pyrenees, you have certainly made this a Europe problem. But you may not command much sympathy in London, Paris and Berlin.

Illegal immigration is naturally a major item in this weekend’s press. Apart from the tide of souls from West Africa, it seems that, as a result of France [naturally] ploughing its own furrow and tightening its regulations, more sin papeles are now flooding southwards across the Pyrenees than northwards. So Spain feels caught in a pincer and resents the lack of sympathy from Brussels. In the UK, one of the main union leaders has called for an amnesty for all illegal immigrants, on the grounds they’re needed for all the menial tasks in the economy that the natives won’t undertake. How much more true this must be of a booming Spanish economy in which nationals don’t even want to wait at table, never mind sweep streets and clean toilets.

Immigration has taken a long time to become a major political concern in Spain but – doubtless reflecting concern at the waves of boat people now coming into the Canaries - a survey this week reported that 69% of Spaniards think there are too many immigrants in the country. By this they mean South Americans, Africans and criminal East Europeans, of course. Not us wonderful Brits.

It’s reported today that the high levels of immigration into Spain have caused a ‘baby bum’. In 2005, Spain had a fertility rate of 1.34, up from 1.33 in the previous year. This doesn’t sound like a major difference but it meant 11,025 more babies, largely thanks to the labours of Ecuadorian and Moroccan women, it seems. Despite this, Spain still falls below the EU average of 1.5 and is well beaten by Ireland (1.99), France (1.90), Finland (1.80) and Sweden (1.75).

Last year Galicia suffered a net 8,000 loss in its population, the highest in Spain. It would have been worse but for the 15,000 immigrants who compensated for the 20,000 people who left the region.

In the latest survey of what concerns the Spanish populace, Terrorism has fallen to 5^th place. Ranked 1 to 4 are Unemployment, Immigration, Security and Housing. In an interesting contrast with the UK, Health and Education come in at only 10 and 13 respectively. And, despite the regular diet of media reports, Corruption only manages 17^th. But I guess this is logical. If there were great popular antipathy to it, there would be less of it.

Given the regular reports of raftfulls of illegal immigrants arriving in the Canary Islands, I suppose it was to be expected the issue of immigration would now be knocking on the door of first place in the list of things that concern the Spanish public. Unemployment remains the prime concern but possibly not for much longer.

Galicia’s population grew fractionally to 2.8m at the start of 2006. All of the increase of 2,000 [and a bit more] was due to immigration. Despite this, Galicia remains at the bottom of the relevant Spanish table, with only 2.6% of its population comprising foreigners.

Asked for help by a Spanish government struggling with waves of illegal immigrants, the EU

has said it has neither additional money nor resources to allocate. One can’t help wondering whether this rebuff reflects lingering irritation at Spain’s unilateral move last year to regulate the presence of hundreds of thousands of ‘paperless’ residents who can now move northwards to other EU members countries. Or maybe it's because Spain already gets 80% of the relevant budget.

Coincidentally, a report today suggests that Spain’s high level of economic growth over the last decade owes a great deal to the influx of immigrants. In fact, it goes so far as to say the numbers would have been negative without this boost. In retrospect, perhaps it’s only fair they were allowed them to stay.

And still on this subject - as you would expect, illegal immigrants use a thousand pretexts to justify entry into Spanish territory. But none as surreal, say the police, as a group of Algerians who landed from a raft in one of the north African enclaves and claimed they were British citizens who’d left their papers in their hotel. In Gibraltar, presumably.

I see the suspicion I voiced a few days ago has now been confirmed – “Today the European Commission finally turned round and said Spain should take some of the blame for the surge in illegal African migration to the Canary Islands. The EU justice commissioner, Franco Frattini, said – in a nutshell – that the Socialist government helped cause this crisis, with its amnesty last year for hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants. Spain granted this without first controlling black-market labour or consulting EU leaders. This enraged countries like Germany, who suspected that many of the regularized migrants would soon be turning up in their country, thanks to the border-less Schengen zone. It also seemed likely to be what immigration officials call a “pull factor” for fresh migrants.” . . . ‘Chickens’ and ‘roosting’ are the words that spring to mind, I guess.

As it addresses its growing immigration problem, Spain is lucky enough to be able to weigh up the pros and cons of both the struggling British and French models. As regards the former, food for thought is provided by this statistic from a recent survey – 81 per cent of British Muslims consider themselves Muslim first and British second. This is a higher proportion than in Jordan, Egypt and Turkey and is only exceeded by Pakistan.

There are said to be between 15 and 18,000 illegal immigrants here in Galicia. But this represents only 2.5% of the population, against 8.5% for Spain as a whole and 16% in the Balearic Islands.

The Spanish president, Mr Zapatero, has proposed a triple-element bi-partisan approach to the problems currently dominating the media here – achieving a permanent ceasefire with ETA, controlling illegal immigration, and dealing with the vast and wide-spread corruption arising from the construction ‘bum’ of the last decade. However, the opposition leader has rejected this, possibly because he wants to be free to claim skulduggery always soars here when the socialists get back into power. Of course, to him it doesn’t matter if this is true or not, so long as it’s credible to the populace. Which – thanks to the last socialist administration – it certainly is.

The Spanish like to see themselves as non-racist. But, as someone once commented, it’s easy to be tolerant when you’ve nothing to tolerate. Immigrant numbers have been rising quickly in recent years and, for the first time, concern about immigration has now replaced unemployment as the number one worry for the populace. In third position is housing, with terrorism falling to fourth. It’s ironic, then, that the Spanish government has said it will suspend the current peace process if ETA is proved to be behind a raid in south France which netted hundreds of small arms.