Meet the Spanish immigrants desperate to shine - 'we aren't criminals'

"A battered sailboat arrived on our coast with 106 illegal migrants on board," began Spain Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez in a speech in Congress in early October.

"The undocumented migrants, among them 10 women and a four-year-old girl, were found in a shocking state. Starving, dirty, with their clothes in tatters, a horrific stench wafted from the hold of the 19-meter boat."

"This news story could have been published last week," Sanchez added. "In reality, it appeared in a Venezuelan newspaper on 25 May 1949, and its protagonists were Spaniards, 106 of the 120,000 who crossed the Atlantic between 1945 and 1978 to escape poverty, misery and the Franco regime."

Spain is a "country of migrants" Sanchez argued, before going into a powerful defense of immigration, calling it an economic necessity and a humanitarian responsibility.

It ran completely contrary to the current tide of far-right, anti-migrant rhetoric sweeping the European content with countries like Germany and Italy closing their borders.

Spain's far-right party VOX was not impressed.

"If you like migrants so much, why don't you let them live in your house, prove you're such a great humanitarian and philanthropist," VOX party leader Santiago Abascal said to Sanchez during the parliamentary debate.

"Why do you let them enter illegally?" continued Abascal. "It isn't women and children coming here, the immense majority are military fighting-aged males coming from countries where there is no war."

"Why do you hate immigrants so much?" responded Sanchez, the session heating up as he accused the far-right of "feeding hate," arguing that migration goes hand-in-hand with prosperity.

Sanchez has promised to legalize 900,000 undocumented migrants in Spain over the next three years as record numbers of African migrants continue to arrive on Spain's Canary Islands - over 40,000 arrivals in 2024 - a new record.

It might not be politically popular in Europe, but the continent needs migrants. The Bank of Spain estimates around 25 million migrants will be needed in the country alone to maintain current standards of pensions and healthcare by 2053, due largely to a plummeting birth rate.

Neighborly help

But anti-immigration policies win votes. CGTN went to a Spanish class in Madrid's Hortaleza neighborhood to hear from migrants and Spaniards who try to help them.

Run by NGO Somos Acogida or 'We Are Welcome,' migrants learn the language, get support with legal papers, and find work.

We meet Ibrahima Barry who was just 14 when he left home in Guinea, crossing Mali, Niger, the Sahara desert in Algeria, then took a three-day life-and-death boat journey from Morocco to Spain where he lost his best friend.

"I wouldn't make my worst enemy take the route I took, I saw kidnappings, people died," he said. "When the boat turned over we all had to grab the guide rope and hold on, those of us strong enough to hold on, that is, anyone who couldn't, drowned - like my best friend."

Seven years later Ibrahima works legally, has a place to live, and at 21 is still chasing his dream of becoming a professional footballer.

Spain's socialist-led government may have made the dreams of almost a million other migrants possible too, announcing the legalization of 300,000 undocumented migrants a year, for the next three years.

Fundamental to the economy

The grassroots NGO founded by Emilia Lozano and her husband Luis Casillas Garcia among others welcome the new policies to process legal papers for nearly a million undocumented migrants, but say they don't go far enough.

"We think these policies are a positive step forward, but our understanding is that they are insufficient," said Casillas Garcia, citing the two to three year process many need to get a legal work permit.

"The problem is that there are 900,000 people here in Spain who cannot access the workforce legally or generate wealth, wealth that Spain needs," he added. "We need migrants because they are fundamental to the future of our country's economy."

In that two to three year wait for papers many migrants are forced into illegal, precarious and poorly-paid work - like selling fake football shirts on the streets of Madrid and Barcelona in searing summers and freezing winters, running from the police.

'We are not criminals'

The European dream isn't what many in Africa think, said Ibrahima, who now works at Zara and earns an average Spanish salary of around $1,400 a month, sending home around a third of his salary to help his family in Guinea.

"We have this vision of Europe that's completely different to reality," he said. "At home we think it's paradise here, then you come and the reality is a slap in the face, it's the exact opposite."

The new policies the Spanish government announced in October aim to make life a lot easier for people like Ibrahima, who could only recently go back to Guinea to see his mother for the first time in eight years.

"Migrants, we're not criminals," he said. "If people only got to know us the way Emilia and Luis and Somos Acogida have, they would see that."