Long Strait -Present Continuous-

After a long and dangerous journey, on land and sea, migrants using the route of the Strait of Gibraltar or the Canary route face endless bureaucratic procedures that push them to live in inhuman cond

The migratory route from North Africa to Spain is not a new route. In the mid 90's there was a boom in irregular arrivals by sea from Maghreb countries to Spanish coasts. After the signing of agreements between the Spanish state and countries such as Morocco or Senegal, these arrivals were significantly reduced, becoming almost null for years. It is after the closure of the Balkan route and the known dangers for migrants on the central Mediterranean route, from Libya, that this old route is reactivated with a massive arrival of immigrants. Until the Spanish government blocked journalists, and so, hided what was happening.

In 2018 the media focus is on Europe's Southern Border: the Spanish southern coast. The massive arrival of people from Morocco does not go unnoticed by the international press. Then Spain, as on many other occasions in its history, decides to hide the issue by preventing the press from accessing the places where news were happening: ports, migrant centers, etc.

This phenomenon no longer made the headlines, but people continued to arrive and die at the southern border.

Emulating the agreement that the European Union made with Turkey, the Spanish government signed agreements worth more than thirty million euros with Morocco, a transit country for these migrants, so that the Maghreb country would be the one to control the migrant community.

Therefore, given the lack of access to the north of Morocco, migrants use the so-called Canary Route, which is considerably more dangerous and is currently active.

After this accomplishment, the migrants who manages to reach Spain have an uncertain future ahead of them: first they must pass through a migrant center, then they are faced with a stay in a country that does not allow them to work and in many cases they have a deportation order. They are then faced with not having a work permit and, in many cases, a residence permit. They are forced to spend years living and working precariously at the expense of unscrupulous employers who make them work in conditions that could be likened to slavery while living in precarious camps without water or electricity.

The work carried out up to now explores all the hotspots in Spain: from Andalusia to the Canary Islands, as well as northern Morocco. Arrivals, sea rescue, deaths, repatriations and how these migrants live on Spanish soil.