I'll never forget those looks. There were about eighty of them, all black, young, of the bodies of the athletes, boys to draw attention to. They were on the outside of the police station, sitting next to each other on the floor, quietly, with national police circling around. The other day I arrived in Melilla. As soon as I woke up I knew that a large group of immigrants had passed the wire fence, at eight o’clock in the morning I was at the door of the police station, I was faced with what I had seen so many times on TV and photos.

However, I found the situation completely unreal, out of place and out of time on that sunny autumn morning in the Mediterranean. Without a privileged direct witness, I saw myself in another world, spectators of a scene in slave films that could not be true, poor blacks in the hands of powerful whites.

I’ve been working as a journalist for 20 years and I’ve never felt the excitement of that time anywhere else. African immigrants were devastated, exhausted by fatigue and tension. They didn’t even have the strength to talk, their clothes were broken, their legs and arms full of wounds. They looked like shipwrecks crawling ashore or just coming out of the torture room.

They weren’t even able to stand upright, but I thought they were heroes, invincible titans of a modern epic. They were once at the destination of the journey to life or death, but there was no joy but suffering, the saddest and most moving looks I have ever seen.

Even though it’s been three years since then, I often remember those immigrants. Where they'll be, what kind of life they'll have. In recent days, I have come to think again about the new measures taken by the European Union to regulate immigration.

Undocumented immigrants may be “retired” for up to eighteen months, even if they are not charged with a crime, or if there is no judicial decision. During this period of time until their expulsion, they will not have the opportunity to defend themselves, the weight of the law will fall on them by tons.
The intention of rightists and liberals has been more easily accepted by the European Parliament than expected, with the support of modern and sympathetic Spanish socialists. Who and Europe, which has scattered millions of immigrants around the world, has betrayed itself and treated as criminals those who come in search of better opportunities. The Europe of the new rich has quickly forgotten where it comes from, what its history is.

He does not want to remember that only one generation separates us from war and hunger. Of the three or four million Spaniards who emigrated to Germany and Switzerland 50 years ago, most of them had no papers, they entered as tourists. I would like to know how millions of Irish and Italians came to America. Probably like the Africans I saw in Melilla. Without the paper.

I will not forget what one of them said to me: “If your house is on fire, you don’t ask permission to walk out the door or jump out the window. That’s what happened to us.”