A year after the port of Santander announced that it would remove the accordions installed in part of its perimeter, they remain. It has been a year since the new president of the Santander Port Authority (APS), César Díaz (PP), took office, who upon taking office announced in an interview with this media that the days of concertinas were counted and that they would be replaced by other types of security systems.
Díaz linked the removal of this material for military purposes to the development of an investment plan that provides for the extension of four-meter high metal closures throughout the perimeter of the port. However, no change in the closure of the venue has taken place, as elDiario.es was able to confirm.
Concertinas are considered a type of material that violates human dignity, they have been removed where they were installed, such as during the closure of the borders of Ceuta and Melilla, and have attracted censorship from political parties, social organizations like Safe Passage and institutions like. the Mediator.
Already a year ago, there was a significant reduction in the irregular entry of people into port areas to access ships traveling on shipping lines with the United Kingdom. This fact has not been attributed so much to the concertinas as to the installation of other elements of deterrence and control that have transformed the port of Santander into a fortress: cameras, new lighting, four-meter closure, sensors that monitor the closure or reinforcement of the public. and private surveillance, among other measures. But the concertinas, with their great symbolic charge, remain in place.
According to the 2022 report of the Cantabria Public Prosecutor’s Office, the “jumps” of the fence had already been reduced by 79.48%. “In a moment of very serious intrusion, the Port Authority decided that the best way to protect a specific area was to use this element. But many other things were done, physical reinforcement, police reinforcement… a set of important measures because the problem was very important. This has improved the problem so much that we are now at the lowest level of intrusion in the last eight years,” the port authority president said almost a year ago.
The conclusion of his statements to this newspaper was that the accordions would be removed, alongside the implementation of an investment plan: “It is planned that the four meter high enclosure will be implemented in other areas of the Port and where there are accordions, this will eventually replace them. In other words, it is planned to remove the accordions and replace them with a four-meter speaker. This is a process that we are carrying out, provided for in the Investment Plan in several phases. The still photo from now on will not be maintained and we will address the change of enclosure so that everything is of this style,” said César Díaz.
The photo of that moment is the same as today’s, which dates from 2021, when the former president of the APS, Francisco Martín (PRC), gave his agreement for the installation of this material. The social and political rejection of its installation effectively led to a halt to the purchase of additional material and the extension of the controversial coronation, but what was installed has not yet been removed.
A turning point in the whole controversy was marked by the Ombudsman, who spoke out on the subject in June 2022, criticizing the port of Santander for its strategy of using accordion cables against the entry of Albanian migrants and other nationalities in its facilities and reminding it that the use of this material implies their “criminalization”. The territory of the Autonomous Port does not escape the protection of human rights, I have come to tell you.
This is how the Ombudsman reacted in response to a complaint for safe passage, a fact that led the Santander Port Authority to suspend the purchase and installation of an additional 10 kilometers of concertina lines, as ‘reported elDiario.es after viewing the contract provided on the transparency portal. .
At that time, the Port of Santander excused the failure to dismantle the accordions already installed in order to look for alternatives. This approach was reiterated by the new occupant of the presidency of the APS. In one manager or another, the truth is that the top blades continue to be displayed at the Port access points. In fact, his vision has already been “normalized” by citizens, who have already had an artistic reflection denouncing this situation.
The Santander Port Authority was asked about the plan to remove the accordions that “crown” the closure of its perimeter and did not respond to questions from elDiario.es.
