🔗 Share this article

Madrid is adopting a noticeably unique direction from numerous developed states when it comes to immigration strategies and engagement with the African continent.

While countries like the US, Britain, France and Federal Republic of Germany are slashing their foreign assistance funding, the Spanish government remains committed to increasing its engagement, albeit from a reduced baseline.

New Initiatives

This week, the Spanish capital has been accommodating an AU-supported "international gathering on persons of African origin". AfroMadrid2025 will discuss restorative justice and the creation of a innovative support mechanism.

This demonstrates the most recent sign of how Spain's socialist-led government is seeking to deepen and expand its cooperation with the mainland that rests only a few kilometres to the south, across the Straits of Gibraltar.

Strategic Framework

This past summer International Relations Head the Spanish diplomat established a recent guidance panel of renowned scholarly, diplomatic and arts representatives, the majority of them African, to monitor the delivery of the detailed Madrid-Africa plan that his government released at the close of the prior year.

Fresh consular offices south of the Sahara, and cooperative ventures in enterprise and academic are planned.

Migration Management

The distinction between the Spanish method and that of others in the West is not just in spending but in tone and philosophy – and nowhere more so than in handling population movement.

Like elsewhere in Europe, Administration Head Madrid's chief executive is seeking methods to control the arrival of unauthorized entrants.

"From our perspective, the immigration situation is not only a issue of humanitarian values, unity and respect, but also one of logic," the government leader said.

Exceeding 45,000 persons undertook the dangerous ocean journey from the Atlantic African shore to the Spanish archipelago of the Canaries the previous year. Estimates of those who lost their lives while making the attempt vary from 1,400 to a staggering 10,460.

Workable Approaches

Spain's leadership must house new arrivals, evaluate their applications and manage their absorption into larger population, whether transient or more long-lasting.

However, in terminology markedly different from the adversarial communication that comes from several Western administrations, the Spanish administration publicly recognizes the challenging monetary conditions on the territory in West Africa that push people to risk their lives in the endeavor to achieve the European continent.

And it is trying to exceed simply denying access to incoming migrants. Conversely, it is developing creative alternatives, with a commitment to encourage human mobility that are secure, systematic and standardized and "jointly profitable".

Commercial Cooperation

During his visit to the Mauritanian Republic last year, Madrid's representative stressed the input that migrants make to the national finances.

The Spanish government finances educational programs for unemployed youth in nations including the Senegalese Republic, notably for unauthorized persons who have been sent back, to support them in establishing viable new livelihoods back home.

Furthermore, it increased a "circular migration" scheme that provides West Africans limited-duration authorizations to arrive in the Iberian nation for defined timeframes of seasonal work, mainly in agriculture, and then come home.

Policy Significance

The fundamental premise guiding Spain's engagement is that the European country, as the continental nation nearest to the region, has an vital national concern in Africa's progress toward equitable and enduring progress, and tranquility and protection.

That basic rationale might seem obvious.

Nevertheless the past had directed the Iberian state down a distinctly separate route.

Besides a limited Mediterranean outposts and a small tropical outpost – today's independent Equatorial Guinea – its imperial growth in the 1500s and 1600s had primarily been focused overseas.

Prospective Direction

The arts component includes not only advancement of Castilian, with an enhanced representation of the language promotion body, but also schemes to help the transfer of scholarly educators and scholars.

Protection partnership, initiatives concerning global warming, gender equality and an expanded diplomatic presence are unsurprising components in the current climate.

Nonetheless, the approach also puts notable focus it allocates for backing democratic principles, the continental organization and, in particular, the sub-Saharan cooperative body the Economic Community of West African States.

This constitutes welcome public encouragement for the latter, which is presently facing significant challenges after seeing its 50th anniversary year tainted by the walk-out of the Sahelian states – the Sahel country, Mali and the Nigerien Republic – whose governing armed forces have chosen not to follow with its protocol on democracy and good governance.

Concurrently, in a statement aimed similarly at Spain's internal population as its African collaborators, the external affairs department stated "assisting the African community abroad and the struggle versus discrimination and xenophobia are also essential focuses".

Fine words of course are only a beginning stage. But in the current negative global atmosphere such language really does appear distinctive.