How Spain's migrant crisis is emboldening the hard right

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0:49Spain recently passed a law which makes it essentially more difficult to send back returning migrants. More than anything, as we can see in terms of the reaction to this, it is a political problem. When I saw what happened in Spain, I said, you know, we had a version of that. This is really where this all takes us. For the parties of the far right and the hard right to say Europe doesn't understand immigration. This summer I've prepared a playlist with some of the songs I've heard this year. The first song is Quevedo, El Baifo. The second song is Spring Summer 26 by Charlie XCX. That is the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez, wishing everyone a happy summer and taking us through his summer playlist on Spotify.

1:35He may very well be regretting that video now because he finds himself isolated by many of the European countries over what is happening on Spain's border with Morocco. Thousands, tens of thousands of migrants coming through Africa into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. And Spain not doing enough to control it. Welcome to The News Agents.

2:10The News Agents. It's Maylis. It's Lewis. And so those extraordinary images, the videos that just went everywhere on social media at the weekend of between 50 ,000 to 60 ,000 people storming the Spanish enclave of Suta, has shaken and sent shockwaves across the EU itself. and has led to, as we were saying at the top there, this war of words really between different European governments, many of which focusing their fire firmly on Pedro Sanchez's socialist Spanish government, EU holding an urgent meeting of interior ministers today amid those divisions. And basically this is all about whether everyone can agree within the EU, and this is a sort of recurring theme over the years in European migration policy, everyone agrees that a fundamental pillar of the European project is freedom of movement within the bloc.

3:04But what does that mean for its external border? Because of course, once you're in and you're into the Schengen area, the passport-free travel zone, which Souter is not in, but obviously Spain itself is, then that puts tremendous pressure if you have one of these migratory waves, which we saw obviously on a much bigger scale about 10 years ago after the Syrian civil war and all of the pressures that put on the EU. But basically, the governments from across Europe being led by Georgia Maloney's Italian government, blaming internal Spanish immigration policy, including a sort of amnesty that they've given to hundreds of thousands of irregular migrants, illegal migrants over the past 12 months, blaming them for, in effect, attracting these sorts of migratory waves, which, of course, once you're in, as I say, you don't necessarily have to stay in Spain.

3:55you can go elsewhere in the block. Yeah, and I think this incident, the Ceuta incident, is probably the first major test of the EU's migration pact that started in June, just a couple of months ago, after years really of negotiations aimed at creating these common migration rules and sort of stronger sort of unions, solidarity between the member states. And just to go back a step, if you're wondering why on earth we're talking about Spain in Africa, it's something that actually takes you back 500 years or so. There are these two enclaves on the sort of northeastern tip of Morocco, Ceuta and Melilla, and they have belonged to Spain since the sort of, you know, 1500s, since the colonial days.

4:41They actually predate modern Morocco. And they are kind of extraordinary because, as you say, Lewis, they're this, in a sense, they're a gateway to the rest of Europe, but very firmly on the African mainland. And so they've become this sort of magnet for people, not just Moroccans, but anyone traveling up through sub-Saharan Africa, thinking that if they can just get over the wall, over the fences. And you see, you know, around Ceuta, there's very, very high barbed wire fences that separate Ceuta with the rest of Morocco, with all the villages and all the sort of towns of Morocco. And migrants are obviously thinking if we can just scale, scale those barbed wire fences, scale those walls or come in sort of over the coast to Ceuta, to Malia, then we have access to Spain.

5:35And Ceuta, Malia, they're not part of Schengen. They don't allow instant free movement with no passport, but they do allow anyone who lands there on the beach or over the wall or climbing over the barbed wire this chance then to start processing their papers in Spain. And there is this real complication that enters into the whole equation because Spain recently passed a law, its own Supreme Court passed a law, which makes it essentially more difficult to send back returning migrants. If you think back to our whole sort of debate over Rwanda and what Boris Johnson at the time called, you know, the lefty lawyers who basically said, you know, it's illegal to send people to Rwanda because they're not sure about what they're heading into.

6:21There has been this new judgment in Spain, which means you can't instantly return people. You can't send migrants back. And so there are a lot of European countries that are blaming Spain internally for, you know, essentially making this more attractive now for migrants. And there is this other corner to the story, which is what's happening in Morocco. Now, you may or may not know that the western coast of Morocco is a place called Western Sahara, which has for years been fighting for independence. Morocco claims it. The Western Saharans, the Polisario want to be independent. Algeria, a neighbour, supports Polisario, supports independence.

7:05And recently, Spain reached out to one of the leaders of Polisario, offering them sort of hospital help for an illness. And Morocco really took against this and thought that this was a move by Spain to essentially encourage independence. Sanchez, Pedro Sanchez, Spain's prime minister, has recently been to Algeria. Another sign from Morocco that they felt Spain was kind of taking the wrong side in what they think of as an internal dispute. And so there is a sense that Morocco was already quite disgruntled with Spain. And while they didn't actually, you know, send migrants over the wall to Ceuta, maybe there are some suspicions amongst the Spanish government, amongst Spanish politicians, that they allowed this to happen.

7:54Outwardly, no one is saying that. The Moroccans and the Spanish are both blaming criminal gangs and traffickers and the people who are usually at the centre of this kind of thing. But there is a lot of political beef right now between Spain and Morocco over this really curious, disputed territory of Western Sahara, which might just be making Morocco stick two fingers up to Spain and say, fuck you, you deal with the problem now, we're just turning a blind eye. Yeah, indeed. And actually, if that is the case, Emily, and lots of people think that it is, it reminds us of a striking reality that is quite uncomfortable for the EU and for the European continent, which is that, you know, as you've been saying, Europe's southern border in this place, in this case, doesn't really begin with Spain.

8:39It begins with Morocco. And likewise, Europe's southeastern border, in many respects doesn't end in Greece or it doesn't end in bits of EU member states. It basically is managed by Turkey. Now, we've got to remember this. Basically, how did the EU and the European continent overall, how has it dealt with, what has been one of the primary mechanisms that it's dealt with, these migratory waves and flows and crises that we've seen over the last 10 years? Well, the EU has basically spent years literally paying, cajoling, negotiating with neighbouring states like Morocco and Turkey, basically paying them to stop migrants before they get to European soil, right?

9:18So in that sense, really, we can build as many kind of fences and Coast Guard facilities as we want. But basically, European migration policy is basically about diplomacy, leverage, and it's about how our relationship is with Morocco and Turkey. And of course, that's fine when things are fine, you know, when things are going great. But if relations, therefore, with Morocco deteriorate or with other North African states deteriorate or Turkey deteriorates, then migration stops being a kind of like domestic problem. It basically becomes a geopolitical problem. Right. And so so basically what Europe has done and it's for understandable reasons.

9:50But this is the uncomfortable reality. And this includes us in Britain because we're all affected by it. The border isn't really or the frontier isn't really where the map says it is. It's whether basically or wherever Europe can persuade somebody else to enforce it. Right. And that's basically the bit that's biting Spain, in this case, and the whole continent. Absolutely right. And I think, you know, when we heard yesterday, and we touched on it a little bit when we were talking about Farage and Reform's new policy of, you know, just send them back, give them a drink of water and a biscuit and just send them back.

10:19That's fine if you don't mind pissing off just about everyone who is your neighbour in Europe. And we saw how well that worked in the Boris Johnson years and in the trust years where they basically just got France so angry that they didn't want to help us. You've got exactly the same question going on here. And I think there is something really interesting now about the way Spain is feeling slightly isolated from all this, because Maloney, you know, the Italian prime minister who has also got problems on her right in the way that Farage has got problems on his right with Rupert Lowe. Maloney has come out and said, right, we're suspending the Schengen agreement with Spain.

11:03You know, sorry, you have you're basically on the naughty step. Now, as we discussed, Ceuta is not in Schengen anyway. Schengen allows you free movement without a passport. It's a very easy way of crossing borders. The fact that Maloney, who surely knows this, is nevertheless suspending Spain is not for practical reasons. It's not that she worries that everyone from Ceuta is suddenly going to come through to Spain and then to Italy. She's basically telling Spain they fucked up. You know, they have done wrong. And she is also possibly sending a very strong message to Donald Trump, who has been talking in a similar way about Ceuta.

11:45Maloney and Trump got on really well in the early years. They recently fell out over Iran, over Trump's criticism of the Pope, and indeed over his claim that Maloney was desperate for a selfie with him. She slapped him down in very short words. And I wonder whether what she has done now is slightly create a rapprochement with America, with Trump and tell Sanchez that he's the one that is at odds now with what Europe's trying to do. Just listen to Trump's words on Ceuta from last night and you might get a sense of why there are countries in Europe who are now thinking, oh, my God, we've got to get back on side here.

12:31What should voters in other countries with elections coming up soon take away from what's going on with Spain? I have to be very careful with the whole socialist thing. I think in many cases it's much more than socialist. They skipped socialism. They went directly to communism. But when I saw what happened in Spain, I said, you know, we had a version of that. You could say much worse. We allowed 25 million people under Joe Biden, the Democrats. We had open borders and countries all over the world, almost all of them, sent people that they don't want into our country. And we've gotten a lot of them out and we're getting more, including murders.

13:11And I always say 11 ,888, that was the number of murders. Many of them committed more than one murder. And we're going to be just like that if you put these lunatics in that I see running for office. So once you've basically called Sanchez a communist and said that this is reminiscent of America's southern border, then you are kind of creating this opening, I guess, and this is really where this all takes us, for the parties of the far right and the hard right to say Europe doesn't understand immigration. They've got a serious problem that's waiting to happen. Yeah, and look, and that's why I think, look, Look, obviously, irregular migration to the EU, it has been a massive policy problem for the whole continent.

14:01It has been for 10 years. Actually, generally speaking, over the course of this year and of late, the overall numbers are coming down. And actually, Spain, they point out that as a pressure point, their own border with Africa and with Morocco, that actually, generally speaking, it's one of the least porous or lesser porous bits of Europe's southern frontier. So it is a policy problem, but more than anything, as we can see in terms of the reaction to this, it is a political problem. And I think if we're looking at the way that not just Maloney's government responded, but governments in Eastern Europe responded, the Finnish government responded.

14:36I don't think it's very likely that in a couple of days, in terms of those fellows going into, those people getting into Suta, that they're likely to turn up in Helsinki anytime soon. But, you know, you're seeing this kind of like European Pamela response to this because European governments are so terrified about the political implications and the political pressures from their resident populations of these sorts of images. It's a true kind of like sort of content war as much as anything. Right. I think in the back of European politicians heads, even Maloney, right, as you say, she's on the right, but she's got another splinter sort of right for sort of mirroring our own politics.

15:14now breathing down her neck. You see this time and time again, and they know how potent those images are and how many of the kind of like right wing kind of like online ecosystem, how many people are seeking to use those images internally in each and every political European country for their own political purposes. We saw that in our own country. I mean, not in the EU now, obviously, but we saw that in our own country. Zia Yusuf, Reforms Home Affairs spokesman, turning up in Suta literally this weekend, though sooner did it happen, but he turns up. Just listen to this. I'm here in Ceuta, the Spanish territory that was just stormed by 50 ,000 Moroccan men in that extraordinary footage.

15:55Now, we also saw some of those men maraud through town overnight. We saw them loot shops. We saw them terrorize locals. We heard from a man who said he's wanted for murder in his home country. But here's the thing. When you see 50 ,000 arrive in a single day, what happened spain sends its armed forces in response 200 000 have turned up on british beaches illegally under tory and labor governments just because it's taken a bit longer makes it no less dangerous britain must secure our borders before it's too late so you just see that and each and every european country has got a version of that right and it doesn't matter as pedro sanchez the spanish prime minister has pointed out indeed in a letter to other european leaders pointing out he's calling it fake news, disinformation, because of course he's pointing out that nearly all of the migrants who actually turned up in the enclave after the army arrived on Friday had been deported very, very quickly, preventing, as he said, unauthorised onward movement towards continental Europe.

16:53But it doesn't really matter in the political sense, such is the deep anxiety, you know, the profound angst that there is across European capital, because in the back of their mind, right, they know, you know, this had huge implications for our politics, they know the memories linger of the 2015 migrant crisis, the images of literally hundreds of thousands of people turning up, many fleeing from Syria and the political effects of the Syrian civil war, the Middle East, turning up on Europe's doorstep, which destabilised, unquestionably destabilised European politics for many years to come. Doubtless a component of Brexit itself, of the European Union losing one of its most important members.

17:32So that is at the foreground and background of all of these leaders' minds and explains why, frankly, some of the reaction to this, although the pictures are very arresting, frankly, a lot of the reaction to it is over the top. Look, I think this is what hybrid warfare looks like, frankly. As you've said, this is a content war. This is about deploying images that you can make work to your advantage. Ironically, when Zia Yusuf went, he got there too late and he's actually sort of wandering amongst what he hoped were the crowds of migrants and there's nobody left there. But there are people who are looking to see just how orchestrated this whole thing was.

18:11And I'm not saying this is coming from the far right themselves. But it is interesting that the way the sort of migrant crisis are manufactured has got a little bit of form, actually. And I said before that, you know, there were sort of Spanish officials who are quietly letting it be known that they definitely blame Morocco, even though on the surface of it, they are saying it's trafficking gangs. They think Morocco has form on this. And just to give you a little bit of context for this, if you go back to 1975, a big year in Spanish history, it's the year that Franco, the a long-serving dictator, died.

18:56And in his illness, just before his death, Morocco pushed some 350 ,000 people into Western Sahara to try and assert a claim on the land. They figured that Spain, who kind of guards it, would not be looking that way because everyone was concentrating on the illness of Franco. And in fact, it worked. They pushed the border that way. They asserted control over a part of the land that had been Spain's and not Western Sahara, not Morocco's, and they took it. So in other words, these movements of people are very rarely just sort of somebody saying, oh, it's a calm sea, let's try and go for it. They normally come from a mixture of hybrid warfare, from pictures, from social media, and in some cases, and this has been going on through history, from governments actually deciding this is a good moment to send a message to a neighbouring country who is at times your enemy.

19:56Are you a fan of the Pedro Sanchez soundtrack this summer, Emily? I'm quite new to it. I am quite new to it. Some absolute bangers on there. I mean, some people have, however, pointed out that the Prime Minister might have displayed a bitter portet, given that 100 ,000 people have been forced to flee wildflowers, fires in Spain this summer, given that one of his top choices was Gasoline by Buck Meek. Yeah. But, you know, look, you know, let the guy. Music is music, right? Musica es musica. Si, exacto. That's Pedro might say. Would almost certainly say from his holiday home in Lanzarote right now.

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21:48And I was disappointed with Jeanine Peer, really disappointed with Jeanine Peer. She folded like an umbrella. Why was Trump disappointed with the woman he appointed as the US attorney for DC? A woman, a judge who was known from television and appointed by Trump, but has now let him down. She's let him down essentially because she stood up to him. She threw out a case he was trying to bring, declaring that a former Olympian, a former Olympic rower had vandalised his reflecting pool. And in her court ruling on Friday, she basically acknowledged that the renovation of the reflecting pool that he had brought along was hasty and botched.

22:37It was a problem of construction. It was not an Olympic rower's vandalism. And Trump cannot quite believe that she stood up to him because, frankly, everyone else around Trump has gone along with this whole claim that it's vandalism, including up till the end of June, Janine Pirro herself. The vandalism is very real, despite what Tim Walz wants to say. It's an imaginary problem. No, it is not. It's a very real problem. It didn't peel off. There was vandalism. There was box cutters. There have been seven arrests. There was people literally trying to destroy part of a monument. Not only is it vandalism that is reflected in today's indictment, but there is a cutting of the liner of the pool at the base of the pool for several yards across the pool.

23:30And someone was intent on doing incredible damage to the pool. Yeah. And obviously we talked about this just briefly at the end of yesterday's show. But I think given these comments from Trump and also just just the sort of nature of the story now, the position that Pirro finds herself in, it's worth unpacking a bit more because in so many ways it's the perfect kind of vignette, isn't it? or the perfect kind of embodiment of so much that is going wrong with American politics in this kind of mid to late era of Trumpism, right? Like, basically what we have here is, as ever with Trump, it's about something that in many ways is very minor, right?

24:06It's very unimportant. An obsession of Trump himself, as we were saying yesterday, his ongoing effort to literally refashion the American capital in his own image to make it look like one of his tawdry little resorts somewhere, changing a reflecting pool and renovating it and changing the colour and this being sort of controversial and and and it's sort of annoying and irritating it winds some people up but actually this is about something which is which is much bigger right which is it is actually about who controls kind of reality who gets to actually determine and dictate and say what truth is which is what trump is always about right this is what it's always about with trump whether it's about something small or something big, right?

24:52It's a reminder that Trump, you can be in the Trump coalition, you can be in the Trump tent, doesn't really matter what you believe, doesn't matter what your ideology is, as long as you do two things, as long as you're loyal and you show fealty and you accept his version of events, right? This dispute is not about really whether reflecting pool was vandalised, we know it's not. It's over who gets to define reality when the facts become inconvenient politically for Donald Trump. And what's so interesting about this case is the irony is, right, Pirro was elevated to the position she had precisely because she was seen as showing that fealty, because she was shown as being politically reliable, of taking her dictation, taking her points from Trump.

25:34But ultimately what she's done to some extent is been shaped by the institution in which she works. And because she has basically adopted some of the mores and some of the qualities of that institution, the moment the evidence pointed in a direction that was against Trump, basically that tension between her personal loyalty and her institutional duty became impossible to manage. And we see this again and again and again with Trump. And it is just one of those many ways in which he is constantly stress testing the institutions of American government. 100%. I think that framing of reality versus garbage is absolutely spot on.

26:13But I think it also has real life effects on whether the rule of law is actually working in America right now. Because what happens if you disagree with Trump? Well, if you're in a job in his cabinet, you get fired. If you are the US attorney for the District of Columbia, you also might find yourself out of a job. In other words, he only wants people who are actually interrogating and investigating cases to be working for him, which is not how the rule of law works. And you're right, it is a tiny, insignificant question, this whole reflecting pool renovation, except we hear from Maggie Haberman, who is the New York Times journalist who's probably closer to Trump than anyone else in the media world, describing how Trump spends around, her figure was 70 % of his time, 70 % of his brain time, thinking about these legacy projects, whether it's the arc to Trump, whether it's the wrestling cage on the White House lawn, whether it's the ballroom, whether it's the reflecting pool.

27:22In other words, for him, it is not a little thing. It's actually what is dominating his days. He's literally thinking about this reflecting pool being a signifier of his greatness. You know, it's Ozymandias all over again. $14 million to renovate this pool that really didn't need touching at all. And it's all gone horribly wrong. And he's a visual man. You know, we know that. If it's not on television, it doesn't really count. But when it is on television and people can see that this once beautiful pool now looks like a sort of swampy mess, then suddenly he's really angry. And if Janine Pirro, who is a prosecutor, who is a US attorney, can't see that, can't find somebody to blame for that, then she's out of a job.

28:12yeah and and just on the havenman stuff i mean i think it is genuinely fascinating about the extent to which trump now is just falling back on kind of old reflexes which is what do you do if you're donald trump and actually like politics is getting a bit boring or your power in politics is diminishing or actually your ability you've you've started a war that you can't stop and you've screwed it up and your base is starting to diminish what do you do well you renovate the place you You know, you go back on an old reflex. You're like, actually, let's just do the place up. Let's just build a hotel.