It has been almost a month since 126 migrants, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa, settled in Monterroso (A Ulloa, Lugo). This initiative, part of the central government’s humanitarian programme and led by the NGO Rescate, has disrupted life in the small town, whose municipality has 3,500 inhabitants and the capital around 2,000. The PP mayor, Eloy Pérez Sindín, followed his party’s strategy and publicly questioned it. This has not been rectified. But cultural associations, sports teams and local residents have mobilised to show solidarity and help the new inhabitants of the place. Weeks have passed and the population’s reaction to the arrival of refugees has become clear. The English newspaper Tutor He reported on the welcome they received from the modest local football club.
“Now they are our neighbors. Before, we were 3,500 and now we are 3,626,” emphasizes Tatiana López with a strong logic and far from any political policy. She is president of the Falcatrueiros group, dedicated to the preservation and dissemination of Galician folklore. Their work has also crossed borders and reached national news: together with another group dedicated to traditional music, Entropía Folk, and at the suggestion of the group that organizes the famous Agrocuir Festival every August, they created the Foliada. [reunión para cantar y bailar] I’ve found.
This happened a few days after the migrants checked into the only hotel in the city: the executive delegates the search for housing resources in the community to NGOs. “It was a way of welcoming them. Our students taught them a point of muñeira and another one of xota and the whole place ended up dancing,” Lopez recalls.
Other things happened that day. “The foliada, which many of the neighbours also attended, gave rise to many very interesting conversations,” he points out. Behind the group of refugees and the perverse debates fuelled by the extreme right are 126 individual stories, including that of a journalist who would like to devote himself to it in Europe or another young person interested in studying psychology. At present, everyone has started to learn Spanish and is taking training to apply for jobs. They entered the state by road from the Canary Islands. Most come from Mali – shaken by an already long armed conflict –, Senegal and Mauritania, but not only: there are also Somalis, Nigerians, Moroccans or Cameroonians. Many have applied for asylum from the government, a long, slow and complex bureaucratic process. After six months on Spanish territory, they can access a work permit. The people housed in Monterroso have been there for four to seven months. The resolution of asylum applications generally takes longer.
The Foliada do Foundo, in any case, will have continuity. “We have planned a second round,” explains Tatiana López, “in which they will be the ones who teach us their culture.” In the meantime, Falcatrueiros has adopted a decision similar to that adopted by the Sociedad Deportiva Monterroso, the football team: the traditional music group has proposed to request the necessary premises for the group and “to act as a mediator” in the administrative work at the municipal level. The sports club has made its facilities available, donated clothing and other materials and opened the doors to its matches on the municipal field of Cerdeiriños. The first championship match of Group III of the Primera Futgal category, against Rácing Vilalbés B, began with a greeting to the new neighbors from Monterrey. It ended with the visitors winning 0-2. “We recall that no one flees their home by choice, but rather for reasons of survival or to improve their living conditions,” said the statement from the entity, signed by its president, Balbino Martínez.
The Mayor’s Silence
The tone and content of the team’s writings, made public on August 30, contrasted sharply with the messages that, on the same dates, were issued by the mayor and his meager government team – they govern with three of the 11 councilors in the plenary session. due to disagreements within the opposition. “We denounce the imposition of this new reality without a study of the integration of these people,” said in the local press the councilor Eloy Pérez Sindín, who also assured that there was “great concern in the city.” None of the people consulted for this report confirm this point. “The mayor formulated a scenario in which it seemed that 120 criminals were arriving in Monterroso,” denounces Rafael García, spokesman for the Socialist Party within the corporation, “but it went badly for them. It is a success and Monterroso is an example of solidarity and aid that has even crossed borders and had an impact on international media. “It has generated the opposite effect to that expected.” Other Galician cities have welcomed migrants – Becerreá and Monforte de Lemos, in the same province, or Mondariz Balneario, in Pontevedra – but they have not attracted as much attention.
This newspaper tried, without success, to contact Pérez Sindín to get his version. “In short, I can understand that the mayor is politically confronting, but once these people are here, we have to attend the events and contribute to making the lives of these people more pleasant,” García says. Neighbors and activists are surprised that the councilor did not show up. Questioned about this attitude, the president of the Xunta de Galicia and the Sindín party, Alfonso Rueda, said during his appearance after the last meeting of his cabinet that he was not aware of “neither the frontal opposition” of the councilor to migrants nor the xenophobic demonstrations” of the mayor, and that the municipality “collaborates”. In the same speech, Rueda praised, in line with the argument of Núñez Feijóo, the immigration policy of Giorgia Meloni, the far-right Italian president, without considering its real content: harassment of NGOs, systematic violations of human rights.
“Everyone helps,” retorts the socialist councilor, “the SD, Falcatrueiros, the institute or the school too. And a clothing collection has been organized. In the end, García resorts to one of the arguments that constantly emerge among the inhabitants of an agricultural and livestock region with a large service sector linked to rural tourism: “We all experience this in Galicia. My parents emigrated to Switzerland and stayed there for 15 years. My brother was born there. “We shouldn’t be surprised.”
