Our Own European Wall

These days, it's all befuddlement and discredit about Trump's wall. Building a physical barrier between the United States and Mexico is not only a matter of migration policies. It's a humiliation to Mexican nationals and culture and, by proxy, to the whole people of Latin America. It's easy to understand why Trump's wall is being criticised.

But hey, aren't we holier than thou? Did you know we have our own walls here in Europe? And I'm not talking about the new walls in the much maligned Hungary of the ultra-populist and Eurosceptic Viktor Orban. I'm talking about Western Europe. A real, physical, non-metaphorical wall to separate us from the African continent. A humiliation, all the same, to all those who are born on the other side.

In the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, two small cities in Northern Morocco, a fence separates the first world from the third. It's not a regular, straight fence, but one made to hurt. Two parallel barbed wire fences, six metres tall (18 feet), with an intermediate 3D towrope structure built to stop movement.

This week, hundreds of African migrants managed to climb the fence and reach Spain. Now, there's another odyssey in store for them, as getting off Ceuta and Melilla is no easy task. Many, mostly minors, die hiding in trucks or ferry engines. Others are imprisoned in Immigrant Detention Centers (a fancy name for prisons for innocents) while Europe fills it mouth with criticising Trump's wall. Others are returned to Morocco, where police usually act unrestrained.

The newsy focus of this article is relevant, but I miss the same criticism we devote to Trump's wall. After all, this is our own.