Human rights and European solidarity: Barcelona’s priorities

Although Paris and Barcelona share the same title of ‘refuge city,’ there are important differences in the way that they deal with the issue of welcoming migrants. This matter has not been as much debated in the capital of Catalonia as it has been in Paris. Local public opinion has seemed to be relatively favorable to reception, as evidenced by the ‘Volem Acollir’ (‘we want to welcome’ in Catalan) demonstration on February 18 2017, which brought together more than 160,000 people. It was the largest demonstration in favor of migrant and refugees’ reception in Europe. Ada Colau’s welcoming speech seemed then less disruptive in this

Being a ‘refuge-city’ 153 local framework than Anne Hidalgo’s one in Paris, also because of Catalonia’s recent history and political and economic context. Indeed, since the late 1990s, Catalonia has experienced a new wave of migration, now composed of foreign-born people: there were only Spaniards in the previous migratory periods, in the 1920s and 1960s. According to Nuria Franco i Guillen, ‘Catalonia is the Autonomous Community of Spain that welcomed the largest number of immigrants’ from 1998 to 2009 (Franco i Guillen 2011: 84). Moreover, unlike France, Spain was until very recently one of the European exceptions, with no openly far-right political movements or major xenophobic and nationalist movements (Gonzalez-Enriquez 2017). The words chosen by the Mayor of Barcelona and her deputies in charge of migration issues are then somewhat different from those of the Mayor of Paris, as shown in the following quotes:

Ada Colau Ballano, Mayor of Barcelona:

Although this falls within the competence of the States and Europe, we will do everything in our power to participate in a network of refuge cities. We want cities committed to human rights and life, cities we can be proud of.

(Colau Ballano 2015a)

Europe is at a crossroads and must choose between welcoming people seeking refuge or welcoming new forms of fascism and xenophobia.

(Colau Ballano 2016a)

Today, on the occasion of Europe Day celebration, I would like to share this message of gratitude, because if there is a Europe for which it is worth fighting, it is in Lampedusa, Lesbos, Athens, in all those places that defend life and give the rest of Europe a lesson in humanity.

(Colau Ballano 2016b)

we are deeply ashamed to see how homeless people die trying to save their lives at the doors of our home. Barcelona has been prepared for months to welcome people who do not come because of dehumanized policies [...] I am proud of a city that rebels against injustice and is organized to show the world its commitment to life and human rights.

(Colau Ballano 2016c)

Echoing the words of Paris’ mayor quoted above, these extracts from Ada Colau’s speeches testify to the same claim of humanism, through references to ‘human rights,’ ‘the protection of ‘life,’ the struggle against ‘dehumanized policies,’ and ‘injustice.’ However, the keywords in Ada Colau’s language are not the same as in Anne Hidalgo’s. Indeed, a statistical analysis of the word occurrences shows a clear presence of the terms ‘European,’ ‘municipal,’ and ‘international’ among the ten most used adjectives, alongside the terms ‘humanitarian,’ ‘solidarity,’ and ‘humane.’ This reflects a broader geopolitical contextualization of thisissue of migrants’ reception in Barcelona: this is a European - if not a global -challenge in which cities have a role to play. No reference to the question of dignity is made here, unlike in Paris, which seems to underline how much this term is linked to the issue of camps in the French capital, a problem that Barcelona does not have. In contrast to other major European cities such as Rome or Berlin, Barcelona has not experienced a similar influx of asylum seekers and refugees coming from Africa or Middle East. A real increase began a bit later, in 2017, and accelerated when Spain became the first country of entry for migrants to Europe in 2018 and when the political situation in Venezuela deteriorated. According to the Service of Attention to Immigrants and Refugees of Barcelona (SAIER), asylum applications in Barcelona have increased fivefold in three years, from 1,374 in 2015 to 7,433 in 2018 (Congostrina 2019). In 2018, most of the applicants came from Venezuela, Colombia, and Honduras.