They filed on to the soccer pitch as applause rang out, punctuated by shouts of bienvenidos. Their unbelievable journey had begun months earlier and about 3,000km away; now the asylum seekers, many from Mali, had been being heartily greeted by the residents of a small city within the Spanish area of Galicia.
In late August the municipality of Monterroso, inhabitants 3,600, started to listen to rumblings that they might host 120 individuals who had fled violence and political instability. After risking one of many world’s deadliest migration routes to reach in Spain’s Canary Islands, they had been being transferred to the mainland.
Their arrival was the primary time that the city, tucked within the inside of Galicia, had hosted asylum seekers. “We noticed that some within the city had been beginning to stigmatise them; individuals had been beginning to get a bit nervous,” stated Balbino Martínez, the president of the native soccer membership Sociedad Deportiva Monterroso. “We need to assist these refugees but in addition calm the environment down.”
The membership sprang into motion, placing out an announcement saying it was prepared to do something essential to ease the arrival of those newcomers, from permitting them entry to their services to launching a clothes drive. “We needed to make individuals conscious that these are people who find themselves leaving their houses to outlive, to search for a greater life,” stated Martínez. “They’re not criminals or dangerous individuals.”
As an alternative, the membership highlighted that the arrival of dozens of younger individuals, all wanting to work, was an incredible alternative in a area that had steadily been hollowing out. “This isn’t a query of charity, however of making alternatives,” the assertion famous.
The response from individuals was overwhelmingly optimistic, stated Martínez, with many quickly chiming in with their very own concepts of the best way to assist.
What adopted made headlines throughout Spain. The membership’s first league match included a tribute to the brand new neighbours, providing them free tickets for the season, whereas a hairdresser supplied free haircuts and others invited them to espresso.
Media had been swift to distinction the city’s solidarity with the far proper’s efforts to demonise asylum seekers. The city’s conservative mayor, Eloy Pérez, had been a kind of who had voiced opposition to their arrival, describing the variety of individuals being transferred as “disproportionate” and worrying concerning the pressure on native sources regardless of the central authorities’s vow that it will cowl all related prices – because it had executed with the arrival of Ukrainian refugees.
About 10 days after Monterroso started welcoming its new neighbours, Martínez described them as wanting to combine. “These are individuals who got here to work, they’re scrambling to study the language, to adapt. They are saying whats up to everybody,” he stated. “They’re setting an instance for us.”
He had been thrilled to see the city’s efforts featured in information tales throughout the nation. “As a result of, on the finish of the day, media is commonly stuffed with unfavourable information,” stated Martínez. “For instance, if certainly one of these 120 refugees finally ends up having an issue, will probably be extra publicised than the 119 who do all the pieces proper.”
Related efforts are below approach within the many cities throughout Spain who’ve opened their doorways to asylum seekers who land within the Canary Islands. “Everyone seems to be congratulating us as we’re those within the public eye,” stated Martínez. “However what number of of those sorts of initiatives are by no means reported on?”
Among the many initiatives launched by individuals in Monterroso was a fiesta, full with the area’s conventional dances and music. “We needed to point out them that they’re welcome,” stated Tatiana De Azevedo, the president of the Asociación Sociocultural Falcatrueiros de Monterroso, which works to protect Galicia’s conventional music and tradition.
“We additionally needed to point out the city – the place I’m positive there are people who find themselves towards their arrival – that they’re individuals like anybody else,” she stated. “The music was a option to bridge cultures and nations.”
She and others watched in delight as a few of the new arrivals joined in, making an attempt their hand at devices such because the pandereta and dancing la muiñeira. “It additionally helped us to get to know one another,” stated De Azevedo. “There have been some who, I feel, tried to instil a little bit of concern amongst residents. However now when these guys stroll by means of city you see everybody – younger and outdated – saying whats up to them.”
In some methods, she noticed the nice and cozy welcome as a pure slot in a area that has lengthy been marked by migration. “Right here in our city there are numerous individuals who went to Germany, to Switzerland, to Argentina,” stated De Azevedo, whose grandparents moved to northern France within the Seventies in the hunt for work. “Now the identical factor is occurring. Others come to our nation as a result of it’s a little bit higher off than others.
“However none of us are ever free from having to choose up a suitcase and depart,” she stated. “And hopefully we’d have somebody there to assist us too.”