Older people who go for a walk with pepper spray in their bags, parents who accompany their daughters everywhere, even to mass, merchants who record fights in front of their stores, noises at dawn that prevent rest, unhealthiness in parks and doorways, hospitality businesses that close permanently... there are those who have even put their house up for sale to move to the peninsula.
The residents of Ceuta with whom 20minutes has spoken a month after the massive entry of more than 80,000 migrants claim that the situation has gotten "worse", they estimate that there are around 10,000 immigrants "wandering" around the city, three thousand of them minors - a fact confirmed by the local government and police unions - and they denounce that their daily lives are plagued by dangerous situations. Added to this is an absolute distrust in the rulers, due to the ineffectiveness of the measures put in place until now to restore the security and peaceful coexistence that they displayed until July 31. "That they be taken off the streets, we can't live like that," they request.
Tension broke out tonight in the streets after organized groups of neighbors tried to forcibly dismantle the immigrant camps installed on Trampolín beach, forcing the Police to fire deterrent shots to disperse them.
"The situation is scary. We feel surrounded, it's scary to go out, and here in the store we don't sell anything." The speaker is Cecilia Márquez, owner of Modas Cesy's, a women's clothing and children's clothing store in the center of Ceuta. Márquez does not know how he will be able to pay the rent for his business this month: "I have children's items like school backpacks, I should be selling 800 euros a day with the return to school and yet I can't get to 30 a day," he explains.
This Ceuta merchant says that "the situation in the city has not improved at all." "This is getting worse, it's an odyssey," he describes. Her husband drives her to the store almost every day, but when he works, he takes public transportation. "And any day something is going to happen to me," he laments. A few days ago Márquez recorded on video a fight between migrants in front of his store that went viral. He made it public, he says, so that everyone could see what his day-to-day life is like. Regarding the migrants, who in their hundreds stand and wander in the streets, he asks "that they be returned, but now." It's urgent because she doesn't want to imagine her son going to school alone starting next week, nor does she want her daughter to have to have her boyfriend accompany her everywhere. "Immigrants are getting worse every day. They steal clothes from clotheslines... Everything I tell you is not enough," says this 43-year-old from Ceuta, to whom her neighbors tell her that "they are scared, on alert since the situation is ugly." She says that there are even people she knows who "are considering selling the house and moving to the peninsula." She is angry and sad, in equal parts: "I feel like crying," she says.
Ceuta's neighborhood associations have taken on immense prominence over the last month. They organize protests to demand the return of those without papers and that schools or sports centers not be used as temporary shelters. Their spokespersons are publicly expressing the concerns and fears of the citizens of the most affected neighborhoods. Like Loma Colmenar, where the Government has built a temporary reception camp that has proven insufficient for the needs, making it one of the Ceuta sectors most affected by this crisis. Rafa García Ibáñez is the highest neighborhood representative and this is how he describes how they continue a month after the massive assault: "Here there are now more people than ever lying in the street. They don't put up more tents, we don't understand what they are waiting for, and we feel worse than the first day," he describes.
García denounces that the Government directly lies with the numbers of expelled migrants and those who still remain in Ceuta. "Only unaccompanied minors on the street, I would say there are more than three thousand. One no longer knows what to do. It is a shame, the greatest shame in the world to see children sleeping on the street and waiting for us to feed them. This is very hard and very difficult to explain. We are a very supportive people, but for them to invade our neighborhood like this, that is another issue," he explains.
Their neighbors, in fact, have been publicly protesting for days because since the opening of the temporary center, migrants who previously, they say, were on the beach of El Trampolín or hidden in the mountains have not stopped stationing themselves in the streets of the neighborhood. "There has clearly been a knock-on effect, and since they don't fit in the tents, we have them sleeping on mattresses in the doorways and if you're not careful you'll step on their heads. They line up to get into the facilities, but they fight among themselves and don't let the neighbors sleep," García explains. This week, finally, and after several altercations, the National Police has established a special device in the area, but the clashes are constant, day after day, night after night, in the streets of Loma Colmenar. "It's crazy," says the neighborhood representative.
Fatima sora Abselam lives in Loma Colmenar with her husband and four children. He recognizes himself as a "mackerel", as they call the pure-bred Ceuta people, and he wants everyone to know what it is like to live in his neighborhood now: a day after day of police runs, insecurity, doorways and patios that accumulate garbage... "In Loma we are worse now than a month ago," he affirms without hesitation. "We, unlike other neighborhoods, have not refused to welcome migrants, but it cannot be that there are children, entire families sleeping on the streets. The only thing we ask is that they be picked up so that we can recover normality. That they be taken off the streets, we cannot live like this," he summarizes.
This neighbor has not gone to the beach a single day this entire month, her daughters have not been able to go out to play in the street, not even in the patios of the apartment blocks, where the migrants eat, rest and relieve themselves. Nor have they gone for a walk in the Benzú area where they like to watch the sunset so much. He does go out to neighborhood protests and records from his window the continuous "catch-catch" of the races between migrants and police, up the neighborhood. Like Fátima, many residents feel that this situation has robbed them of the month of August.
Rafa García, the neighborhood leader of Loma Colmenar, warns of a new phenomenon that he has detected. "Every 30 days I see that they have found people who are already becoming leaders and that is a danger, because they spend 24 hours in the street and can organize a mass. If we complain that they are not letting us sleep, and we call the police, one of those leaders asks to throw stones, and they all start throwing stones," he warns. García describes that the spirits of both parties, the neighbors and the newcomers, are increasingly heated. "Migrants have more needs and they scream at the elderly if they don't give them food. How do you think a neighbor who sees them screaming at their parents will act, 'give me, give me', imagine what can happen."
All the Ceuta residents consulted emphasize that they are aware that migrants who wander around with nothing on their clothes deserve humanitarian treatment. But they say that after thirty days the acts of vandalism, bag pulling, fights and sexual assaults between them increase, according to "word of mouth" among the neighbors. "We don't know who we are dealing with, if there are lawyers or doctors or thieves or rapists among them," says Manuel Díaz, treasurer of the Provincial Federation of Neighborhood Associations of Ceuta. "If going out in some neighborhoods is difficult for a man, if you feel intimidated if you come across ten or twelve of the immigrants who are on the street, for a woman and her daughters, it is impossible."
Diaz is one of the people from Ceuta who sent his children to the peninsula for a few days this month, to stay with relatives. "They have stolen our beach, because if you go to La Ribera, you can sit, but you have the migrants, who you don't know if they are in perfect health, showering and doing their business there." The food stores in the neighborhoods with the highest presence of migrants are the only ones that have seen their sales increase, and neighbors report that some abuse the new arrivals. "If a loaf of bread costs one euro, they are charging them two," but others are also refusing to sell them alcohol, to stop altercations and brawls. According to the neighbors, the merchants who have suffered the most are those in the hospitality industry, beach bars or bars in Ceuta, where every August, especially at night, they have full terraces; "You can tell that people don't usually go out and that has an impact." Diaz gives the Spoon beach bar as an example, "as they only work in the summer, they are thinking of laying off half of the staff and even closing permanently."
The neighbors do not stop organizing protests, some asking for shelters and others directly for the expulsion of "the invaders." Everyone is closely following the evolution of the measures taken by the Government after the declaration of the "single command" for the security of Ceuta. "We are in contact with Vivas (Juan Jesús Vivas, president of Ceuta) and we believe that this can be solved if the Government decrees expulsion orders," says Díaz, from the provincial neighborhood federation. "We do not understand why they wander around illegally, when we also hear that Brussels allows their return and Morocco accepts them," he summarizes.
