In the realm of immigration policy, the People’s Party’s term of government started with an event in 1996 that demonstrated the first breaches in the political consensus governing immigration policy. That breach would be a point of reference in subsequent discussions of the Party’s migration policy: the forceful expulsion of 103 immigrants from Spain. Although not strictly a change in policy, the impact this event had on the stance of the PP government justifies a brief summary of the circumstances surrounding the expulsion.
In early July 1996, not even four months after the PP had taken government, El País reported for the first time on the issue: 103 immigrants had been expelled from Spain in a manner that contravened the Foreigners Law. They had been drugged and flown out of the country to different locations in Africa, some to countries they had no personal ties to. The measure was directed by the Ministry of the Interior. Representatives of the United Left (IU), NGOs and trade unions were furious about the abuse of the fundamental rights of the immigrants affected and about the fact that money from the
European funds was used to carry out the expulsions.272 Leftist politicians, in particular, commented
on the issue in the following weeks and used the topic to remark on the – in their eyes – restrictionist migration policy of the government, that saw migration as a problem to be stopped.
“Thus, to reduce emigration [immigration is meant, JT] to a problem of public order is a most dangerous stupidity. Our own experience should vaccinate us against this type of simplifications. I do not know where those, who now are trying to downplay the issue, were when Spain was a country of massive emigration, but – was there anything more pitiful than to see our peoples having to go and look outside for employment and sustenance, which was denied them here? Is there anything more discouraging than to feel treated as a second- or third-class citizen in countries being more developed than yours? Nowadays the Spanish workers do not emigrate anymore. But, precisely because this has been our history, we are obliged to understand and share the drama of those who arrive to our country because
they see themselves obliged to emigrate from their own one.”273
As can be seen, Spanish emigration memory thereby served as an argument to criticize what had happened and to attack those who ordered the measure, as realized here by Jordi Solé Tura, member of the PSOE and a former Minister of Culture.
Much of what had actually happened stayed unclear for weeks, so that the Minster of the Interior, Jaime Mayor Oreja, was summoned before the Parliamentary Commission of Justice to respond to the questions of the opposition on 29 July 1996. He defended the actions taken, proved that they were in line with current legislation and accused the Socialist Party (PSOE) of having acted in a similar
way when in government.274 Spokesmen and -women of those center-right parties supporting the
government (CiU, CC, PNV) affirmed their support for the PP, but also criticized that immigration was treated as a problem of public order. The leftist opposition, on the other hand, heavily attacked the Minister and his party for acting against the law, accused them of putting the political consensus on immigration policy at risk and warned that they were creating an atmosphere of intolerance and
272 See IU califica de "terrorismo de Estado" la expulsión de 119 inmigrantes, El País, 6.7.1996. The article still
gives the number of 119 immigrants as in this early phase of coverage two different expulsions were confused. This was corrected in later El País articles.
273
El problema y la solución, El País, 29.7.1996.
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racism.275 The deputy of the Basque Solidarity Party (Eusko Alkartasuna) even went further than this
and heavily attacked the minister, stating that the expulsion was unlawful due to the fact that it was a collective expulsion and that the right of asking for asylum was negated. She also brought evidence to the forefront that drugs were used to sedate the immigrants, a fact that had only been known by
rumor in the weeks before the commission’s meeting.276
The harshest critique came from IU spokesman Willy Meyer Pleite, who demanded that there be consequences to this affair. At the heart of his argumentation was the fact that Spain, because of its emigration history, should develop an understanding for illegal immigrants in its territory and therefore never again treat them the way the 103 were treated:
“Mister Minister, Spain, for its recent history of massive emigration and forces exiles, is obliged to share this drama by giving solutions to these citizens, understanding that they are not citizens of second or third class, but citizens with full rights: the rights that are gathered in our legislation and in international law and not to never fall into the double morals, into the hypocrisy of, depending on when it is of
interest, immigration is a problem of public order or not.”277
Following this hearing the expulsion came up in a number of parliamentary interrogations and
debates,278 and even elicited a reaction from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.279 But it is
almost more interesting to see how the issue was taken up in public discourse. Two letters to the editor stood out as examples of the different ways in which the events and the government’s reaction to them were considered. Interestingly, both used emigration memory to mark their point. The first of the two was published a few days after the commission’s session. The reader contrasts what Spain was with what is had become in his eyes:
“We have forgotten fast that Spain has been a country of emigrants or that the present society is a
result of the internal emigrations. […] Has Spain turned into the police dog of the EU?”280
To him, Spanish society was now at a crossroads and had to decide how to deal with the foreigners present in the kingdom:
“Either we start treating the poor foreigners with more respect or we will start to feel more ashamed each time for this country that calls itself democratic, but that uses racist methods on those who have a
lot of color but little money.”281
The second letter was a direct response to the first one. The reader argued that the case of Spanish emigration was completely different from that of present day immigration. While concurring with his counterpart that the memory of past emigration was important to be upheld, this memory had a completely different quality to him:
275
See DSC, 6. Leg., Comisiones, Núm. 44, 29.7.1996, 852-867.
276 See Begoña Lasagabaster Olazábal, DSC, 6. Leg., Comisiones, Núm. 44, 29.7.1996, 859-861.
277
Willy Meyer Pleite, DSC, 6. Leg., Comisiones, Núm. 44, 29.7.1996, 858.
278
See e.g. El PSOE acusa a Mayor de mentir sobre la expulsión de 103 africanos, El País, 31.10.1996, further
BOCG, 6. Leg., Serie D, Núm. 24, 24.9.1996, or DSC, 6. Leg., Comisiones, Núm. 124, 12.12.1996.
279
See Exteriores asegura que la mayoría de los inmigrantes deportados quedaron libres al llegar a Lagos, ABC, National, 17.8.1996.
280
Inmigrantes expulsados, El País, 4.8.1996.
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“In the article […] he feels embarrassed of our country for these actions and reminds us that we, too, have been immigrants, with which I am fine; but my disagreement lies in the fact that very few Spanish families did this illegally. My family, for example, emigrated to Germany in 1965. First we were there as tourists and little later, through employment contracts, we lived in Stuttgart for six years – with the aim of saving and returning to our country, without trying to gain German nationality at all costs and in most cases accepting tough and badly-paid jobs the native population would reject. With this I want to say that the comparison is not adequate and that, of course, we have not forgotten that we have been immigrants. How to forget six years of hard work in an awkward country without knowing the
language?”282
The 103 immigrants that were expelled were qualified as illegal – a status Spanish emigrants supposedly never had. The experience of the hard working Spanish families in an “awkward country” was qualified as incomparable to the parasitic behavior of those immigrants coming to Spain at present to just acquire citizenship and without accepting to work hard.
The two letters read together are interesting, as we can closely observe two mechanisms at work in the employment of emigration memory, that we will encounter all through the 1990s: identification and dissociation, which we already had seen briefly in the rhetoric of 1980s conservative politicians. The expulsion of the 103 again and again was brought up in parliamentary debates on immigration
policy,283 offering an easy point of attack for the opposition.284 In a way the measures taken by the PP
in its first weeks in office were a negative legacy that constricted the space in which the government
could maneuver its migration policy in subsequent years.285