The Attorney General of the State, Álvaro García Ortiz, warned this Thursday, in his speech at the solemn opening ceremony of the judicial year, against those who sow “the seeds of hatred” against migrant children. “History will judge us if, when we talk about migrant boys and girls, we treat them as if they were mere merchandise, numbers or stickers that are exchanged in the market of words or, what is more dangerous, that sow hatred.” against these particularly vulnerable people that can spread in poorly informed or manipulated societies,” said the head of the Public Ministry.
The words that the head of the Public Ministry spoke before King Felipe VI and the rest of the political and judicial authorities have a special resonance at a time like this, in the midst of a political conflict over the reception of migrant minors and after terrible events such as the murder of a minor in Mocejón have been used by different far-right terminals to launch xenophobic messages. “False” messages and in which migrant minors are “generally criminalized”, according to the prosecution of the Hate Crimes Chamber, which is studying whether they can constitute a crime.
The report presented Thursday by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, relating to data collected throughout 2023, reflects the increase in arrivals of unaccompanied foreign minors in Spain compared to previous years. A “significant increase” with 4,865 minors, mostly boys, compared to 2,375 in 2022. The country of origin with the most minors is Senegal, far ahead of Morocco, Gambia and Algeria.
In total, as revealed by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the registry that records these minors detected, at the end of last year, a total of 12,878 unaccompanied minors compared to 11,417 in 2022, in this case the majority coming from Morocco. The procedures launched to determine the age of these young people have also multiplied: a total of 7,422 checks compared to 4,805 the previous year. The Public Prosecutor’s Office highlights the problems reported by the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Canary Islands, where, for example, the province of Tenerife has been “totally overwhelmed” by these tests.
“Disinformation”
The Attorney General’s speech also comes at a complex time for the institution. García Ortiz is at risk of being investigated in the trial opened against the Public Prosecutor’s Office following the complaint filed by Alberto González Amador, associate of the President of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso. The judge understands that there could be a crime of revealing secrets in the statement with which the Public Prosecutor’s Office sought to deny several hoaxes about the judicial process for double taxation fraud against the businessman and commission agent.
In his speech, the head of the Public Prosecution Service praised the Public Prosecution Service report presented at the event as a relevant instrument against “disinformation, lies and falsehoods”, which he called “one of the most serious risks” to democracy and coexistence. And in the report itself, he recalls that the right to information is “a nuclear element of the social and democratic rule of law” and affirms that transparency is achieved by “avoiding biased information” and “providing data in an objective and complete manner”.
