One expects that, in some office of some department, in some ministry or European subdelegation, a group of eminences, advisors, jurists, economists, scientists, and politicians have been working for years on a plan for Africa. Because, as David Trueba wrote a few days ago, Africa does have a plan for Europe. A plan born out of despair, hunger, fear, the absolute absence of expectations, fleeing wars and famines, terror.
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They are there, in front of us, and all we have is the army, the police, and outsourcing violence to third countries in exchange for money. They are desperate. Only then can you understand that, upon the warning of an open border, you grab a tire and throw yourself into the sea. There are almost two hundred dead people, drowned and trampled, almost two hundred people who are no longer here, who only wanted to live better.
Border control, orderly immigration, of course; but also empathy
We have them now, here, in front of us, and they do not brandish weapons, but handwritten signs. One of them read: “We have trades” and next to it another: “Long live Spain.”
There will be solutions, very complex and not immediate. A plan for Africa, for them, so that their lives are not a hell to escape from. Because what the right and far right say without saying it is that, to contain them, prevent them from entering, expel them, what they propose is violence. That is why they talk about invasion. The proposal they do not want to hear themselves say is shoot first in the air and then, do whatever you want, but do not let them enter and do not let it be seen.
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Border control, orderly immigration, of course. But also human rights, empathy, social justice and the other kind. I am almost ashamed to write that I prefer to live worse than I do so that they, those who want to enter, those who risk their lives to do so, live better and can do so where they were born or wherever they want without their choice being out of desperation.
And continuing with this naivety, I want to think that my taxes also serve to pay the most prepared, intelligent, and realistic people in the EU and that they have a plan for the rest of the planet that does not live in this Babylon amplified by technology. We flaunt wealth, emptiness, and decadence, and we do not want to be asked later to let others have some of what we have in excess.
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