How do you ask a minor who has been supporting his family for years to become a child again? How do you convince yourself that you will not be able to work in years when your family spent everything on your trip? How do you deal with the frustration that follows the fear of the boat? The centers for immigrant minors in the Spanish islands of the Canary Islands (Atlantic) take care of them daily and sometimes sparks fly.
Morocco’s decision to seek explanations from the Spanish ambassador to Rabat, Ricardo Díez-Hochleitner, for a video widely broadcast by police WhatsApp that intervenes quickly in an unaccompanied immigrant juvenile center in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, the capital of Gran Canaria, where their presence was claimed due to a violent incident with a resident, again focused on these young people.
The government of the Canary Islands is currently protecting 2,700 foreign children who claim to be minors, distributed in a network of 27 reception centers, most of which were created in an emergency in 2020, due to the massive arrival of boats. Of these, in at least 600 cases, the Directorate-General for Child Protection has serious doubts that they are really minors.
One of the cases questioned is that of the protagonist of the video incident, a young man who threatened an educator with scissors, says the director general of that department, Iratxe Serrano, for Efe.
“Our centers, our educators are perfectly prepared to handle the situation with children, with boys up to the age of 18. Conflicts of this kind are almost always generated by adults who pretend to be minors,” explains Serrano. The problem is that the arrival of immigrants in the last year has been so large that there is a huge delay in tests to determine bone age: 2,016 are waiting.
Serrano is very worried about the cases in which he suspects that the alleged minor is even over 30 years old, because he believes that in no case should he be in their centers, among other things, because his influence is not good for real teenagers. However, eliminating the hypotheses in which these people play, he points out, the incidents that occur in the centers do not usually go beyond “fights and fights”, something normal in any coexistence group.
CENTERS FOR MINORS
“In the centers there have always been conflicts for minors. Those who come to shelters, not only foreign children, but also citizens, come for personal, economic, even very important mental health circumstances. They are protected,” the judge told Efe. of Minors Reyes Martel.
This magistrate tries to imprint the normality of her words, because she remembers that in families there are also conflicts between brothers. “And in this case we are talking about children from different countries, who each end up with their own reality and who see themselves all living in the same house, with educators who are not their father or mother, but foreigners to whom they go to have to get used to- you with her. It is a much more complex reality than what is being talked about. “
“In juvenile centers, this is normal, there are usually fights, altercations,” agrees the president of the Federation of African Associations in the Canary Islands (FAAC), Mame Cheikh Mbaye. “Currently, I make it visible in the media for other reasons, but it’s normal. Professionals working in centers know that sometimes there are problems because they don’t let a minor out. And minors who have just arrived or have recently arrived are You’re frustrated and don’t accept it. It’s nothing new. “
This 31-year-old Senegalese man knows what he is talking about. To his status as a spokesman for the African community in the islands, he adds his three years of experience as director of a center for immigrant minors in Gran Canaria, his university research on the subject and the fact that several households continue to use his mediation. , because African boys trust and respect him.
Mbaye points out a first problem: Spain has a project for the care of minors in need of protection, but it is not adapted to foreign minors. And a 12-year-old boy from Morocco, Senegal or Mali, he points out, has little to do with a Spanish child.
“In Senegal and many other countries, minors start working very early, they participate in the family economy, while here, until the age of 18, you are with your parents, protected. African minors are more mature in this regard, they have “They lived through tougher circumstances. And also the boat is a very super difficult experience, which makes them mature more,” he explains.
THE IDEA OF WORK
Most of these boys do not want to continue in the Canary Islands, they intend to continue their journey in other European countries, generally in France, due to the affinity of the language. And I come up with a fixed idea: work.
“I can’t do it here, because they are minors. That already complicates everything, because here, when I arrive, the instructions I receive are that they have to study, they have to follow rules, rules, regulations … And that’s not what what conflicts they were looking for, “he explains. Many conflicts, he adds, arise from that frustration, from that feeling of closure.
The worst cases end up in offices like Reyes Martel’s. “Most of them are experiencing this like a prison, they want to continue in Europe. They told me: Judge, I don’t want to be here.”
It takes time, says the magistrate, to convince them of the advantages of adaptation, that it is worth investing in training, that this way they will better help their family, if this is expected of them.
Reyes Martel has several examples that he pays to give them a chance, one of which he cites: a boy from Guinea Conakry who went to court because of various conflicts, an almost illiterate boy who turned out to be a gifted “who eaten courses in pairs, today he is a naval engineer and dedicates his free time to help in the living room of Caritas. Return what he received. “
“These guys have incredible strength, they are the future. Let’s be selfish, they are the ones who can help us as a country,” he added.
CONSTANT SUPPORT
It is often difficult. Sociologist Teodoro Bondyale, secretary of the FAAC, just mediated with a teenager who was involved in some destruction in northern Gran Canaria and was shocked by what he said: “I left Morocco because they didn’t want me there. they found that they didn’t want me here either. “
“A minor who has cared for his family since he was 8 years old rebels when he is treated here as a child,” says Bondyale, who is deeply concerned about the “stigma” currently being placed on Moroccan minors in the Canary Islands.
The key, says his partner, Mbaye, is not to give up on boys, no matter how much they defy the rules, no matter how much they abuse their knowledge that “in Spain they can’t be beaten, they can’t be shouted at, they can’t be fired like minors ”. The problem, he says, is that sometimes educators throw in the towel and see no other way out to correct them than to file complaints with the police or the prosecutor’s office.
And that, he warns, complicates everything, because they can start being charged with criminal records. Judge Martel agrees, albeit with nuances: “It is true that we judge protection issues, but we have measures to correct these situations and determine them to continue their normal life, without prior registration.