On 6 February 2014, some 300 people left the Castildistancia camp to reach Europe. They were captured by Moroccan gendarmes and about 200 of them jumped to the sea to surround the pier and reach Ceuta swimming to the small beach of Tarajal. The civilian guards on the other side launched rubber balls and gas to cry to swimmers constantly, killing fourteen people. Only 27 people managed to reach the beach, but were soon expelled and placed in the hands of the Moroccan police.

Yves, Samba, Daouda, Armand, Luc, Roger Chimie, Larios, Youssouf, Ousmane, Keita, Jeannot, Oumaurou, Blaise and another person who does not know what it was called. Everyone wanted to remember this from the Bilbao communication group on the March of Dignity.

Ten years after the massacre, they have sent their reading to ARGIA to denounce the “impunity and injustice” of these years. In 2015, 16 agents were called to testify, but the judge filed the case and the appeals filed since then have repeatedly been acquitted: “This is a clear example of how impunity for border crimes is built and how institutional racism practices are legitimized,” they say.

The migrant's fault for migrating

They find it very worrying how the process has gone, because it reaffirms the idea that migration is a "crime". As the lawyer of the Tarajal case, Patricia Fernández, explains, the case was filed because the witnesses were irregular and could not testify: “They were denied the voice, truth and justice after pursuing it with violence,” they say, and that re-criminalizes the survivors: “It reinforces the idea that guilt is yours, because it was migrated.”

According to the bilbaíno group of the March of Dignity, the southern border of the Spanish State has become a “magnet” and remember that the then Spanish Minister of the Interior, Jorge Fernández Díaz, recognized that the law does not apply in the same way in the border territories: “Geography gives way to another legal concept,” he said.

6,618 deaths in 2023 and how many will disappear

Tarajalgo is not an isolated tragedy. This is the massacre that occurred in 2005 on the Ceuta barrier or, closer to time, in the Chinese neighborhood of Melilla in 2022; 40 people died as a result of the aggression of Spanish and Moroccan police. “Also close to us, say the members of the initiative, there are many people who have lost their lives trying to cross the waters of the Bidasoa.”

Just one fact that causes chills to understand why they call immigration policy “genocidal border regime”: according to the Ca-Minando Fronteras association, in 2023 6,618 people died, most of them on a dangerous route to the Canary Islands, trying to move from the Spanish state to Europe, of them 384 children. To this must be added all the people of 84 boats who have disappeared at sea and have not appeared anywhere. We have no news of them or as statistical data.

“It is important to understand that all this naturalizes and extends – they explain – the colonization war that began with the 1492 regime. It reproduces racial hierarchies under the fallacy of democracy and human rights and within its geopolitical and capitalist logics.”

“The dead are always our supporters”

At a round table organized by Ca-Minando Fronteras, a 46-year-old community leader in Cameroon once said: “The dead are always our supporters.” That is the “limit” that has actually been set, for the members of the March of Dignity. The lawyer of the Tarajal case, Fernández, recalled that “one way of racism is to think that the life of some people matters and that for them it is worth crying, and that other people are not worth it or worth because death has become part of their life trajectory.”

The March of Dignity has been organized for 10 years by numerous associations from different places, and this year too. The march will depart from Ceuta to Tarajal beach on 3 February and 150 groups have already been convened: “There is no anti-cyclicality if we don’t look at that southern border, if we don’t put on our agendas the massacres and violence that occur every day,” they conclude.