BARBATE, Spain Along the southernmost tip of Spain, the coast is rough and windswept, the vegetation crabby, the beaches lined with sharp brown reefs. Near the soaring lighthouse of Cape Trafalgar, the waters often foam and churn because powerful currents are clashing here.
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This is a dangerous frontier, on the cusp of two seas - the Mediterranean and the Atlantic - a legendary passage best left to experienced navigators.
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But the Strait of Gibraltar is one of the main crossing points into Europe for smugglers bringing drugs from Morocco and migrants from all over Africa. Hundreds have died along the way. Last year, the police said they intercepted close to 14,000 clandestine immigrants along the Spanish shores, and 663 illegal vessels. By most estimates, many more immigrants escaped, and the route has long been seen as an open door.
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This may now change. The coast is being fitted with an electronic barrier that runs along the stretch of Spain's coast closest to Morocco.
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Under pressure from the rest of Europe, Spain has been spending heavily, buying patrol boats, helicopters, night-vision scopes and heat-seeking cameras, all focused on the strait, from Barbate to Algeciras, and beyond Gibraltar, along the coast almost as far as Málaga.
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At its narrowest, the sea passage is just 14 kilometers, or 9 miles, wide, but it bristles at all hours with oil tankers, warships, fishing vessels and the tiny boats of the traffickers.
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"We switch on at dusk and we can follow the images via the heat-seeking cameras," said Lieutenant David Oliva, head of the civil guard in Barbate. The cameras, some stationary and some mobile, send signals back to his command post, allowing patrols to track approaching vessels. This summer, he added with pride, faster boats were delivered to Barbate's civil guard. Until recently, Oliva said, the drug traffickers had the best equipment.
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According to the European Union, of the nearly half a million illegal migrants who come to Europe every year, one-fourth come via Spain. The reasons are evident.
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There is geography: Spain's long coast and its proximity to North Africa.
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Also, social contrasts between Southern Europe and North Africa are even greater than those between Mexico and the United States. European statistics show that the average income is 12 times as high in Spain as it is in Morocco, and that the discrepancies are much wider between Spain and West Africa.
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At the same time, Spain needs immigrants. Like the rest of Europe, the country is growing older fast. It has the lowest birthrate in Europe and as its prosperity grows, so does the aversion to menial jobs, like picking vegetables, cleaning and working in construction or factories.
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Acknowledging this reality, the new Socialist government has in recent days proposed an amnesty for illegal workers who can prove they have held a job during the last year. Still, the disorderly flow of migrants has to be stopped, said Consuelo Rumí, the secretary of immigration. Of Spain's estimated 2.7 million foreigners, she said, an estimated 1 million have no valid papers.
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The Madrid government also hopes its new cooperation agreement with Morocco may help stem the flow. Relations soured during Spain's previous, conservative government, which Morocco considered abrasive, but now both sides aim to share information between their police forces and have appointed judges to act as liaisons. Morocco has been embarrassed because of its citizens' seemingly crucial role in the train bombings in Madrid in March, which killed 192 people. Most of the suspects now in Spanish jails are of Moroccan origin and are members of a radical Islamic group.
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"The spectacular growth of illegal immigration from the Maghreb region and from Morocco in particular is enormously worrying," Juan Fernando López Aguilar, the justice minister, said at a news conference. "It requires sharing information on the networks that smuggle people."Last weekend, guards intercepted three boats with 114 people near Fuerteventura, one of the Canary Islands. A week earlier, the Barbate civil guard picked up a vessel with 57 people, adrift and taking on water. "We had to detain them, but we also saved their lives," Oliva said. Their flimsy boat was barely fit for 20, he said.
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Once detained, the boat people are sent to a Red Cross post. "Usually people are very frightened and some are really sick," said Manuel Fénix, who heads the small Red Cross center at Barbate. Here a small staff and local volunteers help to give the migrants showers, dry clothes and food.
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One of the difficulties, Spanish officials say, is sifting people who are genuinely fleeing political persecution or violence from those in search of a job, who make up the large majority.
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Above all, Fénix wants to see a harsh crackdown on traffickers. He calls them extortionists; along the Strait of Gibraltar they ask the equivalent of a thousand dollars for the short, dangerous crossing in rickety boats. Almost every town along the coast has unmarked graves, holding unidentified bodies that were washed ashore.
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Fénix said the traffickers lately had come up with a new idea, which he called "criminal."
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"They tell people to wound themselves, to make sure they get to a hospital, because the hospital will give them papers," Fénix said. "'So now we've been seeing more people with knife wounds on their back or their legs. People who have slashed themselves. It's barbaric." The New York Times
Marlise Simons
The New York Times
