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Spain: Violence against immigrants

01 September 1999

Madrid council has removed 100 Romanian families from an area in the Malmea neighbourhood where they had been living for a year. As they were being ejected on 8 July, a five-year-old boy was run over on the main road. Following protests after the eviction, and the Romanians' refusal to leave Madrid, the local council erected a camp in an uncultivated field ten kilometres from Madrid. It was set up in three days using army tents. There were attacks against Maghreb country citizens in the Ca'n Anglada neighbourhood in Terrassa on 14 July. An initial fight between youths developed into an open confrontation against Maghreb immigrants by some people from the neighbourhood. Commercial establishments run by Maghreb immigrants were stoned, and several xenophobic demonstrations were organised. A building inhabited by immigrants in Banyoles (Girona), and a mosque in Girona were set alight on 19 July resulting in injuries to three Ghanaians.

Members of racist groups have increased by a factor of five in the last four years, according to the second Raxen report (RAXEN, European Monitoring Centre of racism and xenophobia) which aims to document racist and xenophobic attacks in Spain. In 1995 police sources only identified 2,331 youths as being members of violent groups, most of whom were football supporters. By 1998, 11,132 violent youths were under security force surveillance. According to estimates from the Movimiento contra la Intolerancia (Movement against Intolerance), the number of people associating with organised violent groups is at least 10,400, but could be as high as 20,800. These groups have provoked thousands of racist attacks in the last decade.