Spain

class=”MuiTypography-root-142 MuiTypography-h1-147″>Migrant farmworkers in Spain living in makeshift encampments have little hope for formal work

Many migrant farmworkers in Spain say they can't afford housing, so they live in makeshift plastic housing near the farms where they work. Local governments have tried to remove these informal settlements and relocate people to shelters far from the farms — but they keep building back.

The WorldMarch 7, 2023 · 1:45 PM EST

• By Gerry Hadden

Wide view of Almería in southern Spain.

Gerry Hadden/The World

On a windy, chilly day, a young Moroccan man opened a padlock on a makeshift door to his dwelling in Almería in the southeast region of Spain.

He declined to share his name, which is common among the migrant farmworkers here who do not have working documents and fear getting deported.

The young man's home is made of four posts wrapped in layers of white plastic. He lives with his friend in the 60-square-foot space with a dirt floor and two mattresses with blankets. 

There are about 100 such encampments in the area that sprung up when Almería’s farming began to boom 20 years ago.

Europe's fruit-and-vegetable farms depend on the work of migrant day laborers. But many of these workers are migrants who say they can't afford housing, so they live in makeshift, plastic housing near the farms where they work. Local governments have tried to remove these informal settlements and relocate people to shelters far from the farms — but they keep building back.

The plastic keeps crops safe from the brutal sun and wind in this arid region.

Credit:

Gerry Hadden/The World

Global inflation is keeping food prices high everywhere, including Spain, where much of Europe’s fruit-and-vegetable crops are grown. But Europeans can’t blame the recent jump in tomato prices on labor costs. Migrant farmhands are paid as little as $40 a day. 

Almería's farmlands are often called a "sea of plastic," referring to the miles of white plastic sheets that protect the watermelons and zucchini from the harsh sun and wind. When the plastic wears thin, the farmworkers often use it to protect their precarious shelters. 

The man said that for years, he lived in another encampment called Walili, but in January, local authorities surprised residents by razing it.

"The police were outside, yelling for everyone to get out," he said. "They came and tore down everything. We said OK, and left. But I can’t take it anymore.”

After the fire in June, local authorities furroughed the open land so that migrant farmworkers couldn’t rebuild. The goal of the regional government is to raze the 100 shantytowns — but no one’s proposed new housing for the workers.

Credit:

Gerry Hadden/The World

Officials said they demolished Walili because it was a public-health threat, citing dirty and dangerous conditions.

But activists and farmhands suspect that Walili was more of a public relations problem.

"Why this particular shantytown and not another one?" asked local activist Ricardo Perez from nongovernmental organization Derecho a Techo, or Right to a Roof.

“It's because it's very close to the road that goes to the tourist area of Cabo De Gata" — a coastal park with popular beaches. Tourists used to drive right past Walili to get there. 

Perez said that the migrant farmworkers would love better housing but added that they have no voice and few allies. 

Down at the beach that Perez mentioned, 15 minutes away, a local café owner named Antonio said he has no sympathy for the laborers. It’s a sensitive issue here, he said, so he only wanted to give his first name. The government, he said, should tear down all the shantytowns.

Most homes in the Almería shantytowns are wrapped in discarded plastic from the greenhouses that dot the region.

Credit:

Gerry Hadden/The World

“How can these people come to Spain, and then not want to pay for anything?" he said. "They steal electricity, water.”

They just want to make a lot of money, he said, without giving anything back.

When Walili was demolished, the nearby town of Níjar offered the 450 displaced residents temporary shelter in an old warehouse in town. There are bunk beds inside, but for just 50 people. And a Moroccan man riding a BMX bike out front said that this was not the solution.

“There are only 23 people left in the shelter now,” Isham Maraui said. “There’s no work here. We’re too far from the farms. The bosses don’t come around here.”

By bosses, Marraui meant the farm owners. They didn’t respond to written questions about the working conditions of the day laborers. As for the rest of the Walili residents, activists said they took shelter with friends in other encampments.

Most of the shantytowns, like Atochares, are set back off the road — out of sight, out of mind, at least for now. And there’s not much in place to protect them.

The entrance to one shantytown, in Almería. Most are set back from roads and go largely unnoticed by the general public.

Credit:

Gerry Hadden/The World

“A fire tore through here in June,” Moroccan farmworker Abdellah Skifi said.

“I came rushing from the fields, but it was too late. I lost everything, my hut, my clothes."

He said he even lost his dog.

Skifi was crashing in a friend’s hut. He’s been in Spain for 20 years. But like virtually all of the undocumented workers, he said, farmers won’t give him a work contract, telling him they can’t afford to because the work is seasonal.

Farmhand Abdellah Skifi at his home in one of the many shantytowns in Almería, Spain.

Credit:

Gerry Hadden/The World

And without contracts, the farmhands are stuck earning about $5 an hour, with no chance to move out of the camps.

The young Moroccan man who was forced out of the bulldozed Walili encampment now sits atop a wobbly, wooden frame, hammering makeshift beams to posts as the sun went down, building himself a new, bigger hut.

Another migrant pushes a wheelbarrow, with new material for the walls — more white plastic sheeting.

Related: Migrants from northern Africa make dangerous trek through Spain’s Canary Islands

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class=”MuiTypography-root-142 MuiTypography-h1-147″>A spike in ringworm cases in Spain leads to a surprising culprit: the barbershop

​​​​​​​A ringworm outbreak among Spanish teens has been traced back to barbershops and a fashionable haircut: the fade. Spanish dermatologists blame dirty electric razors.

The WorldFebruary 3, 2023 · 12:45 PM EST

• By Gerry Hadden

Customers wearing a face mask to prevent the spread of the coronavirus get a haircut at a barbershop in the southern neighborhood of Vallecas, Madrid, Spain, Sept. 25, 2020. More recently, a different infection — ringworm — has been cause for concern at the barbershop, with dirty razors blamed for an unusual outbreak among Spanish teenagers over the past year.

Bernat Armangue/AP

In Spain, more than a hundred teenage boys picked up ringworm over the past year.

The outbreak, unusual for the age group, is among the largest in Europe. More commonly, ringworm spreads from household pets, or even farm animals, to young children, according to dermatologists.

But in 2021, dermatologist Leonardo Bascon started seeing something new.

“Some patients were coming here with this new pattern,” he said, from his office in a hospital near Barcelona. “And they were a bit older. The mean age of our cases is actually 19.”

Bascon and his colleagues decided to investigate. They jumped on a nationwide, online chat group for Spanish dermatologists. In a week, they’d compiled 107 similar cases from across the country — and they realized it was ringworm.

From there, the doctors were able to trace the infection to the barbershop and a haircut that’s all the rage, the degradado, or, the fade — via dirty electric razors.

Spanish dermatologists blame dirty electric razors at the barbershop for a recent outbreak of ringworm among teenage boys in the country.

Credit:

Gerry Hadden/The World

Every single one of the 107 patients had been to the barber to get a fade within two weeks of showing infection.

In Spain, it seems virtually every teen boy sports the fade — it starts out short on the side and gets longer and longer toward the top of the head.

“The key is shaving all the way down the skin around the ears and the nape of your neck,” said Nacho Lizan, a high school soccer player who has the fade.

Many teenage boys, like the ones shown here, in Spain, are opting for the fade, a haircut that’s long up top and shaved down along the scalp.  

Credit:

Gerry Hadden/The World

Shaving down to the scalp is where the infection can set in.

Barcelona haircutter Sukhreet Singh said he’s been doing a lot of fades lately, shaving one side of the kids’ heads down to the scalp.

“Sometimes, they also ask for patterns shaved into their hair, down to the scalp.”

Singh said he hadn’t had cases of ringworm in his shop. But razors like his can pick up the fungus from the skin of one client and quickly spread.

“I get 20 to 30 clients a day,” Singh said. “One could easily pass ringworm on to another.

This is a barbershop after all, he said. “We need to be vigilant.”

Singh, like most barbers, disinfects his razors and scissors with alcohol after each client. But apparently, some don’t.

Bascon said ringworm is easily treatable but prevention is best. The fungus, he said, can cause inflammation, fever and even bald spots. Imagine, he said, going to school with a bald spot.

“They are very concerned about the problem. It could lead to alopecia [abnormal loss of hair] if it's not properly treated.”

Spanish dermatologist Leonardo Bascon holds up a photo of one of his young male patients whom he believes contracted the visible ringworm infection from a barber’s electric razor. 

Credit:

Gerry Hadden/The World

The news has spread fast among teens, with some posting warnings on TikTok. But despite the concern, some are still sticking with the fade.

“I’ve been avoiding the barber since I heard about ringworm,” said Gael Doncell, a high school soccer player. “But next week, I’ll be back in the barber’s chair.”

Although some teenage boys in Spain say they worry about the spread of ringworm via dirty electric razors at the barbershop, they're not shying away from getting their hair cut.

Credit:

Gerry Hadden/The World

He and his teammates, who also have the fade, agreed that from now on, they’d just ask the barber to disinfect the razor before they take a seat. And if they forget to ask, they said, they’ll just hope the fungus hasn’t found them.

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class=”MuiTypography-root-142 MuiTypography-h1-147″>Big tobacco is forced to pay for cigarette butt pollution in Spain, but smokers may soon be on the hook

They’re tiny, they’re toxic, they’re everywhere. Cigarette butts are a huge source of pollution in Spain and lawmakers have said, enough. They're ordering cigarette makers to pay for the cleanup, but smokers worry they’ll end up footing the bill.

The WorldJanuary 26, 2023 · 11:30 AM EST

• By Gerry Hadden

Antonio Trujillo holds a cigarette while resting on a bench, in Pamplona, northern Spain, Sept. 25, 2020.

Alvaro Barrientos/AP/File photo

More than a third of Spaniards light up on a daily basis. And when they’re done, many of their cigarette butts land in the street.

“Seven out of 10 cigarette butts in Spain get flicked to the ground,” said Rosa Garcia, the director of a nongovernmental organization called Rezero in Barcelona.

A lot of cigarette butts reach the coast when beachgoers drop them into the sand, she said, adding that more than 25% of the waste collected on Spanish beaches consists of plastic cigarette butts. 

The cost each year to remove the tiny toxic nubs around Spain totals hundreds of millions of dollars, according to Garcia. A Rezero study suggests that it breaks down to anywhere between $15 to $25 per person every year.

“And even if you don’t smoke, you’re still paying for that cleanup — through your taxes,” Garcia said.

A recent decision, however, changed all of that. Spanish lawmakers have said that enough is enough — they passed legislation this month that would require cigarette makers to pay for the cleanup, but smokers worry that they’ll end up footing the bill. 

Cigarette makers declined to speak to The World about their plans. But the most likely scenario is that they will reimburse individual town halls for the costs they already incur in street-cleaning. And smokers are worried that the companies might turn around and hike prices to compensate for the losses. 

Barcelona has issued fines, at least on beaches, charging about $33 for dropping a cigarette butt in the surf. And last year, the city even banned smoking there altogether.

The fine was minimal, but another city initiative could hit smokers harder.

Barcelona’s City Hall is proposing a 20-cent tax per cigarette butt — which would be another $4 per pack, essentially doubling the price — but consumers would get that money back if they turn in the butts. It’s a similar scheme to getting some money back for returning soda cans for recycling.

The logistics for carrying out such a plan are still unclear.

Questions remain as to where people would return the cigarette butts. One logical choice would be at one of Spain’s 16,000 state-licensed tobacco shops, called estancos. But one estanco operator, Dani Perez, said he wouldn’t even touch them.

“In terms of hygiene it’s disgusting,” he said. “I am not going to start counting cigarette butts that have been lying on the ground, or sucked on by others.”

Nor would he have the time to do it, he said.

Cigarette butts are also filled with toxic residue from the tobacco, making them virtually impossible to recycle.

“A single cigarette butt can contaminate up to 1,000 liters [264 gallons] of water,” Garcia of Rezero said. “They are chemical bombs.”

Some startups are experimenting with biodegradable cigarette butts. But as they decompose, they’d still be releasing the dozens of toxic chemicals injected into them.

As far as cleanup goes, tobacco companies have a couple of months to roll out their plans. 

Barcelona resident Andrés Conde, a 56-year-old who smokes, wonders just how companies like Winston, Camel and others will actually tackle the problem.

“What are they going to do, send brigades of tobacco employees moving down the streets of every single Spanish town?” he raised.

If they do end up passing the cost along to consumers, Conde said he knows what he’ll do.

“I won’t pay double for cigarettes,” he said. “That’s nuts. I’m going to emigrate to Latvia.” Conde normally spends his summers there — where, he said, no one would dare to even toss a cigarette butt to the curb.

And anti-smoking activists say there’s really only one longterm, viable plan: it’s not finding a way to deal with dropped cigarette butts, but getting people to quit smoking altogether.

Related: French nonprofit warns 'COVID waste' could harm the environment

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class=”MuiTypography-root-225 MuiTypography-h1-230″>‘People want to shed light’: Spain finally investigates sexual abuse within Catholic institutions

As full inquiries into clerical abuse swept Europe, Spain remained an outlier. Now, two separate investigations are underway.

The WorldNovember 15, 2022 · 1:45 PM EST

• By Alan Ruiz Terol 

A parishioner enters into the Catholic church of Cazurra, a village of around 75 inhabitants, in the Zamora province of Spain, Saturday, Nov. 27, 2021.

Manu Brabo/AP

Sexual abuse scandals have plagued the Catholic Church for years. While efforts to investigate these cases have multiplied across Europe, Spain remained an outlier.

Now, not one, but two separate investigations are underway in the country: one, commissioned by the Spanish parliament; the other, by the church itself.

Catholic authorities in Spain hired the law firm Cremades & Calvo-Sotelo in February to conduct an independent inquiry into their handling of abuse allegations.

“The church is in deep pain and asks again for forgiveness for the crimes committed by our brothers,” said the head of the conference of Spanish bishops, Juan José Omella, at their plenary assembly last April.

President of the Spanish Episcopal Conference, Juan Jose Omella, speaks during a press conference in Madrid, Spain, Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2022. 

Credit:

Paul White/AP

The initiative followed a groundbreaking report by El País newspaper, revealing 251 new cases, and which was sent to Pope Francis.

Meanwhile, the Spanish parliament voted to task ombudsman Angel Gabilondo with setting up a commission to investigate clerical abuse and produce a report into the issue.

According to the latest update on Oct. 28, the ombudsman’s office has documented 253 cases of sexual abuse, following 149 personal interviews and over 400 communications.

“We must put victims at the center of our work,” Gabilondo said in an address to lawmakers in June. 

In the report, the ombudsman is expected to propose prevention measures and concrete actions to repair the lives of sexual abuse survivors.

“As we’ve seen in other countries, the process itself can help repair victims and society as a whole, which has an obligation of solidarity with them,” Gabilondo said. 

Ombudsman Angel Gabilondo (right) oversees investigation in sexual abuse cases within Spain's Catholic Church.

Credit:

Courtesy of the ombudsman's advisory committee 

One of the lawmakers listening to Gabilondo in parliament was Juan Cuatrecasas, a member of the Socialist party, and one of the country’s leading advocates against child abuse.

More than a decade ago, his 12-year-old son was molested by a religion teacher at the Colegio Gaztelueta, a Catholic school in Spain’s northern province of Vizcaya.

“Our son was like a broken toy,” Cuatrecasas said in an interview with The World. “In order to fix him, as a victim, he needed recognition and reparation.”

He and his wife, Ana Cuevas, co-founded the advocacy group ANIR, an acronym standing for Stolen Childhood National Association in Spanish. 

But to Cuevas and Cuatrecasas, speaking out came at a cost.

“My husband received threats from people on the street, telling him to be careful with what he was doing,” Cuevas said. 

ANIR founders Juan Cuatrecasas and Ana Cuevas in Madrid.

Credit:

Alan Ruiz Terol/The World

The Gaztelueta school, which is run by Opus Dei, a powerful and theologically conservative institution within the Catholic Church, didn’t reply to a request for comment.

In 2018, the Gaztelueta teacher was convicted of sexually abusing the son of Cuevas and Cuatrecasas, but the Supreme Court later reduced the sentence from 11 to two years. In Spain, people who receive a sentence of up to two years and have no previous criminal record can avoid jailtime. He never went to prison. 

“The power of the church before a court is devastating,” said Cuevas, and added that reporting one case was like taking the whole institution to court.

In Spain, the influence of the Catholic Church is rooted in centuries of religious hegemony.

During the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, which ran for almost 40 years until his death in 1975, schools controlled by the Catholic Church proliferated.

Philosophy professor Miguel García-Baró said that Catholic institutions were shielded against external criticism, which created a “very dangerous” situation.

But García-Baró believes that things are changing — even from within Catholic institutions.

Three years ago, he received a surprise phone call from the Archbishop of Madrid, Carlos Osoro. Pope Francis had recently issued an order for all dioceses to report and investigate all sexual abuse allegations, and to establish a public system for submitting reports. 

To help him in the task, Osoro saw García-Baró as a good fit: an unaffiliated Catholic and reputed scholar, who was a member of Spain’s Royal Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. García-Baró accepted.

The result was Repara, Spanish for Repair, an organization based in Madrid, offering counseling and therapy sessions to sexual abuse survivors, as well as training programs, among others services.

"I’ve seen how the Spanish church has changed its attitude in recent times,” García-Baró told The World.

An advisory committee to the ombudsman's investigation into church sexual abuse meets on Oct. 10 in Madrid. 

Credit:

Courtesy of the ombudsman's advisory committee 

Cuatrecasas and Cuevas admit that Madrid has led the way in helping victims among Spanish dioceses, but they see it as the exception within the church. 

Asked about what other dioceses have done, Cuatrecasas replied, "a botched job."

Cuevas said that standing by sexual abuse survivors would benefit the church and its public image. 

“The image they’re showing is of them standing with pedophiles, so it’s about time that they support victims instead,” she said.

García-Baró, who also serves as an adviser to the ombudsman investigation, is confident that whatever the findings of the reports, it will be impossible to ignore them. 

“People want light shed on this problem, and to heal it, radically,” he said.

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class=”MuiTypography-root-134 MuiTypography-h1-139″>Unusually warm seas kill off mussel harvests in Spain, leaving restaurant owners with limited options

Most Mediterranean mussels are grown in the Ebro Delta, in Spain’s northeast, and often enjoyed by consumers nearby. But this year’s Mediterranean harvest was nearly wiped out by unusually warm seas, forcing restaurant owners to import their mussels from other countries.

The WorldOctober 7, 2022 · 1:00 PM EDT

• By Gerry Hadden

Mussel growers harvest mussels by passing beneath the docks on small barges, pulling up the ropes and cutting the harvest loose.

Gerry Hadden/The World

In Spain, local mussels are a summer delicacy. But this year’s Mediterranean harvest was nearly wiped out by unusually warm seas. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the entire crop of baby mussels seeded for next year’s harvest has also died off.

Most Mediterranean mussels are grown in the Ebro Delta, in Spain’s northeast, and often enjoyed by consumers nearby.

At typical Spanish mussel joints, waiters place rubber buckets on the floor around the tables where customers can chuck their empty shells. One such place is called Avi Agustí, a wooden hut held up by vertical pilings. At outdoor tables, tourists can sample the local haul, steamed and usually as fresh as they come.

The mussel "docks" in the Ebro Delta support thousands of submerged ropes on which the mussels grow. The shallow water here became too hot this summer, killing tons of mature mussels and all of the newly-seeded ones destined for harvest next year.

Credit:

Gerry Hadden/The World

This year, however, the mussels had to be trucked in from Italy, according to owner Jonah Gomez.

“We’d reserved this entire mussel dock for these tourist tastings. But all of the mussels on our 75 lines have died.”

Jonah Gomez, Avi Agustí mussel joint

“We’d reserved this entire mussel dock for these tourist tastings,” she said. “But all of the mussels on our 75 lines have died.”

Jonah’s son, Eric, pulled up one of the thick ropes dangling from the dock into the 10-foot-deep water. It was caked with the mollusks. Each was hand-glued to the line a year ago. They look like they’re fine, but, in reality, they’re not.

One of thousands of mussel ropes populated with dead mussels that must now be cleaned off.

Credit:

Gerry Hadden/The World

Holding up the batch, Eric said they’re “all dead, due to the water temperature.”

“This summer’s heat was uncommon,” Jonah said. “The sea is always warmer in August, but once it gets above 82 degrees [Fahrenheit], the mussels die.”

Spain had a record 42 days of water temperatures over that 82-degree line. It was an unprecedented underwater heat wave.

“It climbed past 86 degrees, then all the way to 90,” Jonah said. “Not the air temperature, but the water. It’s unacceptable.”

Unacceptable, but also uncontrollable. Seawater is influenced by air temperature, among other things. And in Spain, this summer was very hot. And day after day, week after week, that heat warmed the sea.

Spain does produce mussels in other regions. But Delta mussels are loved for their small size, and unique flavor — one that they get from the brackish waters where the Ebro River spills into the Mediterranean — and mussel-enthusiasts really love them.

So, it’s become a problem for restaurants like Pepe’s Bar, a nearby beachside spot. In the kitchen a cook watched over mussels steaming in a cauldron. But like Avi Agustí’s, they were also imported, these ones from Greece.

Dead mussels to be removed from a mussel rope. 8 millions pounds of the molluscs were lost this year due to warm waters.

Credit:

Gerry Hadden/The World

Waitress Sandra Teayazco said that diners will often ask whether her mussels are from the Delta.

“When you tell them the Delta mussels are finished, many customers say ‘forget it,’” she said.

Lluisa Ripoll is a fifth-generation fishmonger who owns a food stand at Barcelona’s iconic Boqueria market. It’s where tourists and locals can be seen rubbing shoulders as they shuffling past each other. These days, Ripoll said she has only Atlantic mussels on ice, which are bigger and saltier than their Mediterranean cousins. They’re delicious in their own way, she she explained, but she worries about the loss of biodiversity, and how that could affect sales.

Mussel ropes hang in the 12-foot-deep waters of the Ebro Delta.

Credit:

Gerry Hadden/The World

“If there are no Delta mussels, the price of other mussels goes up due to supply and demand,” she said. “It’s a problem for us, because we can no longer offer them.”

Spain has lost roughly 8 million pounds of Mediterranean mussels this season. But Ripoll’s family has survived thus far by adapting. Just a couple years ago, she said, she never dreamed that customers would buy seafood online. It’s now a big part of her business. She adds that she’s confident she’ll make it through the mussel shortage, because sells a variety of fish and other seafood.

For the Gomez family down at the Ebro Delta, however, the outlook is grimmer.

“You just lose your entire investment like that,” said Jonah, tossing her lifeless mussel line back in the water.  “Even the imported ones died,” she said. “So now, we have to go back and import again.”

Jonah Gomez and her son Eric own a major mussel concession on the Delta. They had to import mussels from Italy this year for their tourist 'tastings.'

Credit:

Gerry Hadden/The World

She said she can only hope that, in October, the water temperature drops enough.

“But you never know,”  she said. “We’re forever vulnerable to these conditions.”

Growers worry that, with climate change, this summer’s heat wave could now be the new normal. The only solution they can think of is moving their docks farther out to sea into deeper, cooler and saltier waters. Even if that were to alter the flavor of their mussels, they say, it would be better than having none at all.

Related: A UN report says Earth faces 'unprecedented' threat to biodiversity

class=”MuiTypography-root-134 MuiTypography-h1-139″>Spain passes law to remember and exhume victims of civil war and dictatorship

​​​​​​​Spain’s socialist government recently passed a new law greatly expanding the rights and recognition of victims during the dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco and the years that followed.

The WorldSeptember 23, 2022 · 11:30 AM EDT

• By Gerry Hadden

A visitor approaches some of the 65 mass graves discovered recently near a provisional field hospital in northeast Spain. The 177 victims buried here were all Republican soldiers killed during the Battle of the Ebro. They were buried without identification, the graves left unmarked.

Gerry Hadden/The World

Jessica Flores stood by a series of unmarked graves on a hill near the Ebro River in Spain’s Iberian Peninsula, grieving for the grandfather she never knew, Andreu Flores, who was killed in the country’s civil war in 1938.

Until recently, the Flores family had no idea where Andreu Flores had been buried.

The family isn’t alone; some are missing, and many are buried in unmarked tombs, a legacy of Spain’s civil war in the 1930s and the ensuing brutal dictatorship under Gen. Francisco Franco that went on for decades.

In July, Spain approved a new Democratic Memory law that declares Franco’s regime illegal and makes the central government responsible for the recovery of the bodies of tens of thousands of people missing from the Spanish civil war and the dictatorship.

It also bans the Francisco Franco Foundation, a private institution dedicated to preserving the autocrat’s legacy, and all glorification of the former dictator.

The government is to draw up maps of where the bodies of an estimated 100,000 people still missing may be located. It is also setting up a DNA bank to help with the identification processes.The missing are those who opposed or were considered to oppose Franco and were subsequently killed and buried in unmarked graves.

The 65 graves, which contained 177 unidentified victims of Spain's civil war have been marked with cement and gravel and will become a permanent memorial site under Spain's new Democratic Memory law.

Credit:

Gerry Hadden/The World

The law aims to improve on a 2007 Law for Historical Memory that experts and activists agreed fell far short of emptying the hundreds of still-untouched mass graves and addressing many other issues.

Spain’s political right is furious about the new Democratic Memory law, claiming it takes the country backward and opens old wounds.

“Today, the government is passing a false history law,” Ivan Espinosa of the far-right party, Vox, the third-largest party in Spain’s Parliament, told reporters.

Espinosa said the new law is another attempt to divide Spaniards: “It is going to dynamite the pact that allowed for Spain’s democratic transition [1975-1978].”

Still, what’s drawn the most attention with the new Democratic Memory law are the tens of thousands of unmarked graves waiting to be exhumed.

In 2018, Jessica Flores’ aging father submitted his DNA to a regional database of war victims.

Jèssica Flores visits the mass grave in northeast Spain where her paternal grandfather, Andreu Flores, was found and identified after 83 years. Andreu Flores died from wounds suffered during the Battle of the Ebro, the bloodiest clash of the Spanish civil war. For decades thereafter, under the dictator Francisco Franco, victims' families were forbidden from searching for their missing kin.

Credit:

Gerry Hadden/The World

Her father died before a match came through but the results showed that Andreu Flores’ remains were among 177 victims buried behind an old stone house that had been used as a field hospital. Andreu Flores died of a head wound in one of the war’s bloodiest clashes, the Battle of the Ebro.

The exhumations and DNA matching is still fairly new. So, when Jessica Flores got the call this year saying her grandfather had been identified, she was incredulous.

“But more than anything, I felt joy,” she said. “Joy that we’ll have his remains. That we’ll be able to lay flowers, knowing where he is.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Two children diagnosed with hepatitis of unknown origin have died in Spain. This, referring to the country's Ministry of Health, was reported by the ABC publication.

We are talking about children aged one and four years — from the city of Murcia and the autonomous community of Andalusia. It is noted that they died after liver transplantation operations.

About the disease of children with acute hepatitis of unknown origin in Spain became known in mid-April. According to the Ministry of Health of the country, almost 50 cases of the disease have already been detected.

Recall that at the end of April, the so-called childhood hepatitis was recorded in 12 European countries — about 40 cases among children aged 1 month to 16 years.

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class=”MuiTypography-root-126 MuiTypography-h1-131″>Surfing scientists in Spain are hunting down microplastics 

​​​​​​​Plastic is everywhere. Scientists have found the stuff in just about every corner of the planet, even through the high seas. But getting a better understanding of what's going on here, where the plastic waste comes from, and what it is, can still be challenging. That's especially true along shallow coastlines.

The WorldJuly 29, 2022 · 4:30 PM EDT

• By Gerry Hadden

Carlota Mateu, right, and fellow student Mireia Gonzalez, bring the microplastics trawler net to shore for inspection.

Gerry Hadden/The World

On a recent dawn on the beach in Barcelona, the sky was black with thunder clouds. It was hardly beach weather, but a couple of vacationing students, Carlota Pinella and Mireia Gonzalez, rented paddle boards anyway.

Pinella unfurled something that looked like a mesh windsock, with a wooden yoke at the wide, open end.

“You just unroll it and clip it to your board with this carabiner and you tow it, floating, behind the board,” she said.

As Pinella paddled, the contraption filtered sea water, catching something you might not notice: tiny filaments and beads of microplastic.

The University of Barcelona’s microplastic trawl awaits unfurling on a sidewalk in front of a paddle board rental shop.

Credit:

Gerry Hadden/The World

Plastic is everywhere. Scientists have found the stuff in just about every corner of the planet, even through the high seas. But getting a better understanding of what's going on here, where the plastic waste comes from, and what it is, can still be challenging. That's especially true along shallow coastlines.

That's why hundreds of sea-lovers are taking to the western Mediterranean this summer to kayak, surf — and, it turns out, hunt for microplastics. The program, Surfing for Science, is part of a citizen science project where volunteers collect and share data with investigators who are often too busy for extensive field work. 

“This really interests me because it’s a way to help with a huge problem close to where I live,” Pinella said. 

And with that, she turned on her telephone GPS app and paddled off, the plastic trawl in tow. It looked like she was being followed by a small, white shark with wooden jaws.

It’s a curious sight for the few folks on the sand this early. Carlos Silva, a.k.a. Arkanoh, a rapper from Venezuela, was downing his last beer after an all-nighter with friends. They’d been watching Pinella and Gonzalez, and wondering.

“Microplastics are interesting,” he said. “You know, last I heard, there are microplastics in our drinking water.”

“It’s true,” said his friend Samuel Insesi, a sushi chef originally from Senegal. “Plastic is everywhere. Especially in Africa,” he said. “It is going to affect all of our lives.”

Soon enough, Pinella returned to the beach to make sure the trawl was working.

“This is what’s great about citizen science,” she said. “It draws in the general public even if they don’t understand the technical aspects of the science.”

But it turns out those two observing from the beach were spot on.

“We’ve already collected some microplastic. They appear to be from plastic bottles, but they need to be analyzed,” Pinella said, lifting the little catch-pouch.

The analysis happens just up the hill, in a lab at the University of Barcelona. Volunteers drop off their samples, and oceanographer Anna Sanchez studies them under a microscope and counts them one by one.

Carlota Mateu, a college student, volunteers this summer trawling for microplastics just off the beach in Barcelona. The water here is too shallow for scientific vessels.

Credit:

Gerry Hadden/The World

“What we found is that there's a lot of plastic on the near shore,” she said. “In beaches here in the western Mediterranean, we found more plastic near big cities such as Barcelona. And we found also a big role for the old breakers and the ports as plastic-trapping areas.”

That’s where the plastic is. But Sanchez is also studying their origins. There are the usual suspects: A red speck is most likely from the top of a Coca-Cola bottle. Transparent white strands come from one-use shopping bags. Then, there are some surprises.

“Yes, it was like, what are these polyethylene green filaments?” she said.  “And then, we realized that that’s artificial turf,” for sports fields. 

“Everybody uses artificial turf for decoration, and for playing sports,” she said. “And in the end, it’s plastic.”

Sanchez said that even if all plastic manufacturing was halted tomorrow, levels in the oceans would rise for decades as waste continues to wash to the sea.

“The most important thing, I think is [for] people to realize the scale,” she said. “There's a sample taken from October last year where we found 45 species of plastic in each square meter. That's a huge amount of plastic.”

And it's a huge amount of work to classify it all. Without the volunteer help, Sanchez said, she’d be light years behind in identifying microplastics — the first step needed for actually getting rid of them. 

class=”MuiTypography-root-134 MuiTypography-h1-139″>Wildfires continue to surge across Spain amid 100-degree temps, drought

Evacuees in the Spanish village of Sant Fruitós de Bages, about an hour outside of Barcelona, have testified to the destruction. "In 15 or 20 minutes, the fire consumed everything," a resident said.

The WorldJuly 21, 2022 · 3:30 PM EDT

• By Gerry Hadden

Spanish firefighters extinguish small fires that reignite under the scorching midday sun.

Gerry Hadden/The World

Europe’s spate of fierce wildfires abated somewhat Thursday amid cooler temperatures, with French firefighters starting to get the upper hand over two major blazes, Spain taming a fire that killed two people and no new outbreaks reported in Portugal.

But a fire in Slovenia on the border with Italy kicked up strongly Thursday, forcing the evacuation of three villages.

If the temperature in Spain doesn’t drop from the high 90s soon fires like this one are likely to start across the bone-dry region.

Credit:

Gerry Hadden/The World

Spanish firefighters were tackling nine blazes, with two said to be especially dangerous in the northwestern Galicia region. Some of the 11,000 people evacuated because of the fires in Spain began returning home, and a major highway in the northwestern Zamora province reopened after two days.

Temperatures above 104 degrees and a drought have worsened Spain's wildfires this year. Thursday's highest temperature in Spain was forecast to be 90 degrees.

The largest wildfire in northeast Spain, as of mid-July, consumed more than 4,000 acres in a single night. In Sant Fruitós de Bages about an hour outside of Barcelona, hundreds of people were evacuated from their homes.

Francisco Hernandez was in a field in front of a charred hillside forest and saw the blaze firsthand.

The wildfire in northeast Spain has reached homes and highways.

Credit:

Gerry Hadden/The World

“I came down around 4:30 in the afternoon, and that entire hillside was a ball of fire,” he said. “In 15 or 20 minutes, the fire consumed everything.”

Hernandez said four or five helicopters were dumping water over the land, but it didn’t have any effect. He was terrified that the fire would cross a farmer’s field and reach his home.

“But luckily, some farmers came and plowed [to get rid of low grass and brush] in front of our street,” he said. “Otherwise, that fire could have reached my home within 10 minutes.”

Waiting to go back home 

Hernandez got lucky. About 1,000 other nearby residents were forced to flee. Many slept in the local civic center on Red Cross cots.

The next morning, people were milling about, waiting to find out if it was safe to go back home. Like Toni, who asked not to use his full name, who sat at the civic center  with his dog, Boss.

Evacuees in the Spanish town of Sant Fruitós de Bages wait to learn of the fate of their homes as a huge wildfire rages nearby.

Credit:

Gerry Hadden/The World

“We have been evacuated from a housing development called Les Brocardes,” he said. “It’s been a day, and we don’t know whether our houses have been damaged.”

Toni said that he and his wife stayed in their home until the last minute, trying to wet the trees down with the garden hose as the flames approached. Looking back, he said, it was absurd.

“When it became hard to breathe, and we saw that all the neighbors’ cars were gone, we decided we had to leave, too.”

Twin sisters, Mireia Vila and Rose Vila were also at the civic center, waiting for news too, about their family home.

A civic center in Sant Fruitós de Bages, Spain, was prepared to sleep evacuees a second night.

Credit:

Gerry Hadden/The World

“It is very sad because we have a lot of memories with the swimming pool, all the trees that we have planted. Every single space you see,” Mireia Vila said. “You remember your childhood.”

“People from [Les] Brocardes are like a family,” Rose Vila said. “Everybody knows everybody. It’s like a crisis in a family. It is not the houses.”

Nor is it the stuff in the houses that really matters, she said.  

More than 4,000 acres have burned in the fire outside Sant Fruitós de Bages, Spain.

Credit:

Gerry Hadden/The World

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

class=”MuiTypography-root-134 MuiTypography-h1-139″>‘Either they die, or we do’: A rabbit plague threatens farmers’ livelihoods in northeast Spain

A plague of rabbits is rampaging through one of Europe’s most bountiful farming regions. Farmers in northeast Spain say that, without help, they’ll lose most of this year’s harvests.  

The WorldJuly 20, 2022 · 3:00 PM EDT

• By Gerry Hadden

Farmers in northeast Spain say the rabbits are wreaking havoc on crops like peaches, pistachios, olives and grapes.

Gerry Hadden/The World

At midday during a sweltering heat wave, farmers in northeastern Spain would normally be heading from their fields to the shade of the village bar. But farmers Ramon Bonet, Ramon Boleda and Joan Bonet are stuck driving around counting rabbits.

Around the village of Verdú, just outside the city of Lleida, they see dozens of them scamper among crops and dart in and out of underground warrens.

“The rabbits have chewed the skin off the vines,” Boleda said. “This vine is done for. This entire harvest is lost.”

Rabbits in Spain are nothing new, but this year’s population explosion is unusual. Locals fear the long-eared bunnies may have gained a permanent upper hand and they’re wreaking havoc on crops like peaches, pistachios, olives and grapes.

Grapevines destroyed by Lleida’s plague of rabbits, causing millions of dollars in damage.

Credit:

Gerry Hadden/The World

The plantations around the city of Lleida are sometimes called Europe’s fruit basket. There are millions of dollars at stake here, as well as the supply of many farm products favored by shoppers from Berlin to Budapest.

A short drive away, Boleda found new losses among his pistachio trees.

“The rabbits eat the bark all around the trunk,” he said.  “They’ve destroyed more than 400 trees.”

Boleda said that’s about $100,000 down the rabbit hole. And the plague is getting worse. There are now up to 1,000 rabbits per square kilometer here, local farmers say. Fifty is the acceptable number, according to the Spanish government.

A grapevine has been killed off by marauding rabbits. 

Credit:

Gerry Hadden/The World

Everyone agrees the bunnies need to be culled. The problem is how to do it.

After the drive around, Ramon Bonet tested his 12-gauge shotgun. He said rabbits have always lived in Iberia — in 300 BC, the Carthaginians named the peninsula España, or Land of Rabbits, and it stuck.

Humans and bunnies have long coexisted. But recent hotter temperatures are causing rabbits to reproduce faster. Bonet said the pandemic hasn’t helped.

“During these years of COVID restrictions,” he said, “no one was out hunting. … Plus, there are just fewer hunters in general. Our average age is now over 60.”

But hunting is the only tool farmers have.

Antoni Torres, a local hunting warden, said that in Lleida county alone, rabbits have overrun 99% of the farmland.

“We’d need to double the number of hunters,” he said, to reduce rabbit numbers.

“But then you create other problems. You can’t have that many people with guns hunting at once.”

 “We need to be able to put out poison,” Ramon Bonet said. “Either they die, or we do.”

The remains of a rabbit most likely shot by a hunter. On a busy night a single hunter can bag close to a hundred rabbits. But it’s not enough to stop their numbers from increasing.

Credit:

Gerry Hadden/The World

That’s exactly what was written on a giant sign residents woke up to on a recent Sunday. It was hanging from this bridge on the edge of Verdú. “Farmers or rabbits,” it read.

And there was something else. Dead rabbits were hung off the bridge with ropes around their necks.

The anonymous gesture attracted TV crews, and sparked a minor, unexpected animal rights backlash in the village.

“The next day the animal rights folks had hung their own sign,” farmer Joan Bonet said.

“It said, ‘to protest, you don’t need to shed blood.’ It had a picture of a bunny giving us the finger,” he said.

The farmers here will keep protesting, as they did recently, driving through town on their tractors.

Officials have offered up to 300 humane no-kill rabbit traps, but farmers have laughed at the offer, saying that it's impractical.

They hope that if shoppers find less produce to choose from this coming fall, society might support their fight to keep the rabbits in check.

Related: 'Fire flocks’ of sheep and goats get deployed to help battle forest fires in Spain

class=”MuiTypography-root-134 MuiTypography-h1-139″>Ukrainian refugees found shelter in Spain’s empty hotels. But then, tourists came back.

Beach towns like Calella turned their hotels, shut down by the pandemic, into safe havens for thousands of Ukrainians fleeing the war. But with tourists back, refugees are struggling to find more reliable forms of accommodation.

The WorldJuly 7, 2022 · 4:00 PM EDT

• By Alan Ruiz Terol 

Tourists enjoy the summer weather at the beach of Calella, Spain, Aug. 16, 2009. Spain is a popular tourist spot for summer holiday-goers with plentiful beaches and high temperatures registered throughout most of the country.

Manu Fernandez/AP

Iryna Levyk fled Ukraine with her two kids at the onset of the Russian invasion, urged by her husband, who had to stay behind. 

They found shelter in Calella, a seaside town in Spain where hotels left empty by the coronavirus pandemic were turned into safe havens for refugees.

Kids played in the hotel hall, and families from all over Ukraine got together and supported each other. 

Related: Refugees find a welcome in Catalan Guissona’s ‘Little Ukraine’

“It was very warmhearted,” Levyk recalled. “We were all on the same boat.”

But as the weather got warmer, and COVID-19 restrictions were lifted, tourists began to flock in, forcing Ukrainian families out. 

During the last week of June, Levyk and her children had to pack up and go to another hotel in Calella. 

“It’s completely normal,” she shrugged. “This is a touristic place, and this is what they live off [of].”

Calella, a town of nearly 20,000 in the northwestern autonomous region of Catalonia, is a poster child for one of the country’s most popular touristic assets: beach towns on the Mediterranean coast.

With the local economy relying heavily on tourism, the long-awaited arrival of international visitors this summer is seen by some as the light at the end of the tunnel.

It’s not only Calella — it’s Spain as a whole. After a two-year hiatus from the coronavirus pandemic, tourism is back. The turning point came this past April with the Easter holiday: Tourists spent $8.1 billion — nearing prepandemic levels, and 10 times more than the same month a year ago. 

But for Ukrainian refugees, the return of tourism is also revealing just how challenging it is to find long-term accommodation.  

Moving around 

In Spain, 120,000 Ukrainians have been granted asylum since the war began. Calella has hosted around 1,500 of them at some point in the past months, and more than 600 are still there, according to local officials.

Spain’s refugee reception system, which is run with support from nonprofits such as the Red Cross, provides people with shelter upon their arrival.

Unlike other European countries, which relied more heavily on local families to host refugees, Spain has used its vast network of hotels to provide shelter.

But more recently, many Ukrainians have had to leave their hotel rooms, which had been booked by tourists paying high season fees. 

It’s something that refugees are warned about — they might be taken somewhere else at any point while they’re in the early stages of the program.

“They don't have the right to choose the place where they are going to be staying.”

 Cristina Domínguez,  coordinator of the international protection program of the Red Cross

“They don't have the right to choose the place where they are going to be staying,” said Cristina Domínguez, the coordinator of the international protection program of the Red Cross.

But the longer refugees stay in one place, even if they know it’s provisional, the more familiar they get with their new community, and the harder it will be to leave.

A councilor for the local government of Calella, Montse Mateu, said that some Ukrainian families had a hard time leaving the town, but otherwise, had no option if they were to remain beneficiaries of the reception program.

“They would be left with zero, with no aid, so it’s better for them to stay inside the program,” Mateu said.

Still, she takes pride in how Calella has welcomed Ukranians and is saddened by media reports about refugees being ejected from hotels, arguing that everybody is doing their best to help them. 

“Nobody has been kicked out,” she said.

Affordable housing in short supply 

Leyk said that she is looking forward to finding a job and getting her own apartment with financial support from the government. But that may take time. 

While Calella has plenty of hotels, cheap apartments are in short supply.

In Spain, the rate of affordable housing per 100 people is one of the smallest in Europe: 0.9, four times below the EU average of 3.8, according to a 2020 report by the Spanish government.

There are 290,000 apartments that qualify as social housing — roughly the same number as those categorized as tourist accommodation.

For now, Levyk said that she is happy to stay in the hotel — but while she may live next door to tourists, she is not on a vacation. 

“Every day, every minute, in our heart, we remember why we are here. And we’re really grateful for this.”

With no end in sight for the war, Levyk hopes that Western allies will double down on support for her country.

“Ukraine really needs help with closing the sky, because many civilians including children are dying every day from bombs and rockets,” she said.

In the meantime, she has no option but to wait and continue to settle down in Spain.

“It would be the most unbelievable and great thing that the war finishes and we can all safely go home, but for now, we have what we have,” she said.

Her kids are on school break, which means that she can’t look for a job now. School resumes in September, which coincides with the end of the tourist season, so maybe finding an apartment will be easier then.

class=”MuiTypography-root-134 MuiTypography-h1-139″>Spain and Algeria at odds over Western Sahara, energy and migration

Last week, Algeria severed trade and diplomatic ties with Spain, and has now threatened to cut off coveted gas sales — which have been protected under a two-decade-old friendship treaty.

The WorldJune 22, 2022 · 1:00 PM EDT

• By Gerry Hadden

The Krechba gas plant in Algeria's Sahara Desert, about 720 miles south of the capital, Algiers, Dec. 14, 2008.

Alfred de Montesquiou/AP/File photo

Europe has struck a deal to buy natural gas from Israel to make up for lost Russian imports.

Madrid, no doubt, is happy about the decision, because Spain’s biggest gas provider, Algeria, is threatening to close the taps, or raise prices.

So far, Algeria hasn’t followed through on its threats to cut supplies or charge more. But last week, Algeria severed trade and diplomatic ties with Spain, and has now threatened to cut off coveted gas sales.

Related: 'Fire flocks’ of sheep and goats get deployed to help battle forest fires in Spain

This comes after Spain upended a long-standing agreement with Algeria regarding its former colony, Western Sahara. Spain backed Morocco's claim that the region should have some limited autonomy, while remaining under Moroccan rule. (About 80% of the country is controlled by Morocco, and the other 20% by the independence-seeking Polisario Front.)

The dispute has brought up conflicts with Algeria around energy prices, the border and migration. 

Years of fighting 

The conflicts are rooted in one of those seemingly intractable geopolitical stalemates. Since the Spanish left Western Sahara in 1975, Morocco and Algeria have been at odds, sometimes violently, over the region’s future.  

After years of desert fighting between Morocco and Algeria, and Morocco and the Polisario Front, a ceasefire went into effect in 1991. But Morocco still wants the vast region to its south. It says it was once part of a greater Morocco. And Algeria backs the Polisario Front in Western Sahara.

The United Nations, meanwhile, has long said the people of Western Sahara, the Saharawi, should decide their own fate. For nearly half a century, no one has quite known what to do next. So, most countries have essentially done nothing. Until recently.

This past spring, Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez told Parliament that he was backing Morocco’s plan for autonomy in Western Sahara, under Moroccan rule. In return, Sanchez said, “we’ve protected our territorial claims.” That is, Spanish sovereignty over Ceuta and Melilla.

Migration issues 

Ceuta and Melilla are Spanish enclaves in North Africa, surrounded by Morocco — vestiges from the colonial era —and Morocco lays claim to them. They’re also significant because they are among the places from where migrants are constantly trying to cross into Europe.

Professor Rafael Grasa at Barcelona’s Autonomous University said that Spain may have struck this sudden deal to solve that border problem.

“Spain could no longer accept the avalanches of migrants encouraged by Morocco. Or the shocking news reports of people being hurt.”

Rafael Grasa,  Barcelona’s Autonomous University

“Spain could no longer accept the avalanches of migrants encouraged by Morocco,” he said. “Or the shocking news reports of people being hurt.”

Last March, some 1,300 migrants, mostly from sub-Saharan countries, rushed the fences in Ceuta. Hundreds made it over. But many got cut on the barbed-wire or hurt in tussles with police.

“Spain believed this was never going to end, which appears to be why it decided to negotiate,” Grasa said.

Related: Barcelona is one of Europe's loudest cities. It's trying to turn down the volume.

By backing Morocco’s plans for Western Sahara, Spain may have gained some stability at its North African borders. But the deal comes at the expense of its relationship with Algeria, according to Dr. Hisham Hellyer at Cambridge University’s Center for Islamic Studies.

He said that using migrants as leverage to gain concessions from Europe isn’t new.

“So, the Turks have done that and other states in North Africa as well,” he said. “And of course, when it came to the Turks, they got a huge payoff from the EU.”

The European Union has paid Turkey hundreds of millions of dollars to ensure that huge numbers of, particularly Syrian, refugees are taken care of in Turkey.

“So that Europeans wouldn't have to deal with them,” Hellyer said.

“Migrants to Spain come through Morocco, Libya and Algeria,” Grasa said.

In fact, on June 8, on the day that Algeria cut diplomatic ties with Spain, 113 African refugees reached the Spanish island of Mallorca. They’d set sail from Algeria.

A 'diplomatic blunder'?

Grasa calls the Moroccan deal a diplomatic blunder. Especially when you factor in something in short supply these days: natural gas.

As Europe weans itself off Russian gas, Spain’s buying a lot more gas from the US. But it’s expensive, and fuel prices of all sorts have shot up there.

At a Barcelona gas station, 32-year-old delivery driver Alex Manuel pumps about $55 of gasoline into his truck. It’s just a third of a tank. But he’s short on cash.

“When gas prices go up, so does the price of food, transportation, everything,” he said. “The only thing that hasn’t gone up is my salary.”

But in diplomacy there’s always a Plan B — and C — Hellyer said. And the public may not know what’s going on behind closed doors.

“I would suspect very strongly that the Spaniards wouldn't have taken this step without being very, sort of, open-eyed about what sort of risks and what sort of benefits [there are],” he said.

Hellyer also points out that Spain isn’t alone in backing Morroco’s autonomy plan for Western Sahara. France, Germany, and the Netherlands have given it the nod, as has the US.

class=”MuiTypography-root-134 MuiTypography-h1-139″>'Fire flocks’ of sheep and goats get deployed to help battle forest fires in Spain

Shepherds in Spain are now training to start “fire flocks" that graze at the edge of forests to prevent wildfires from spreading to populated areas.

The WorldJune 14, 2022 · 2:00 PM EDT

• By Gerry Hadden

Forest firefighters work on a wildfire near the town of Jubrique, in Malaga province, Spain, Saturday, Sept. 11, 2021. 

Pedro Armestre/AP

As summer nears in Europe, firefighters in Spain are gearing up to battle forest fires.  

On a recent day, men armed with gas-powered weed-whackers were working the perimeter of Barcelona, a city hemmed in by the sea on one side and, inland, by a huge forest called Collserola Park. 

Here, where the city meets nature’s edge, it’s crucial to keep the area clean in order to prevent forest fires. Shepherds are now being trained to start “fire flocks,” herds of sheep and goats that graze at the edge of forests to prevent wildfires from spreading to populated areas.

Related: Barcelona is one of Europe's loudest cities. It's trying to turn down the volume.

Weed-whacking worker Richard Verdum laughed at the idea. “If you bring in sheep and goats, they’ll eat everything within reach. All the vegetation will die,” he said.

But experts say that’s not exactly right. Spanish ecology professor Ferran Paunè explained that unchecked forest growth has thrown Spain’s countryside out of balance and goats and sheep — natural ruminants, or grazers — can help.

“As a society we look at a forest as a very good thing. … But for our countries,  it is a big problem, because there are few wild animals in the woods."

Ferran Paunè, ecology professor

“As a society we look at a forest as a very good thing,” he said. “But for our countries, it is a big problem, because there are few wild animals in the woods,” he said — and virtually none that graze.

“You recover vegetation, but not fauna. If you do not have herbivores, you have fire,” Paunè said.

Four flocks of sheep and goats are now working the hills above Barcelona. 

Dani Sanchez, 35, said his so-called “fire flock” tidies up the forest better than any machine.

“My sheep and goats are firefighters. … They’re our firewall.”

Dani Sanchez, 35, shepherd

Barcelona shepherd Dani Sanchez, 35, follows his flock through a park just above the city. His "fire flock" eats the underbrush that can fuel forest fires.

Credit:

Gerry Hadden/The World

“My sheep and goats are firefighters,” he said with pride. “They’re our firewall.”

Sanchez leads his 130 animals through a stand of pines just yards from Barcelona’s outermost road — within earshot of the weed whackers.

Vast strips of forest floor look like they’ve been mowed over the last two months. 

Sanchez’s fire flock is part of a pilot program run by Paunè, the ecologist, and the Catalan government.

If all goes to plan, they’ll provide the entire Catalan region with flocks, from the Ebro Delta to the south, all the way to the French border.

“We need even more flocks out here grazing,” Sanchez said. 

A sign in Barcelona's Collserola Park reads "No lighting fires." The summer is about to begin and people across Spain are expecting an increase in fires with the high temperatures.

Credit:

Gerry Hadden/The World

‘This isn’t sustainable’

Hotter, dryer days due to climate change and neglect in keeping forests clean are two main reasons behind the increasing intensity of the fires. 

Last year, in the Catalonia region of Spain, there were a record 51 blazes in July alone. 

One of last summer’s worst fires swept through the mountains about an hour away from Barcelona. Overnight, a 30-foot-high wall of flames incinerated about 7,400 acres of dense, overgrown wilderness. 

Planes and helicopters dumped water as local farmers bulldozed crops, making a protective fire-cut around the town of Santa Coloma de Queralt. Their actions likely saved the village.

Related: Residents remember their losses as they rebuild from La Palma's volcanic eruption

The next day, fire inspector David Borrell said that it’d be much more affordable to pay people to return to the countryside — to become its custodians again — compared to spending millions in fighting these ever-bigger and more frequent fires, or having to rebuild afterward. 

“This isn’t sustainable,” he said. 

Spain’s forests have grown large as people abandon the countryside for cities.

“Having a mix of farms, forests and grazing lands lets us to break up these large forests."

Related: Spain vows to help rebuild La Palma after devastating volcano eruption

A new generation of shepherds 

Back in Barcelona, Sanchez passes mountain bikers and hikers all day long. Occasionally, he scolds a dog owner for not using a leash. 

But mostly, people enjoy the presence of his flocks. 

“Ever since the sheep arrived, we’ve been running into each other,” a young jogger said as he ran by. “It’s great. It also gives Barcelona residents a different view on nature.” 

But where there are flocks, there must also be shepherds. 

As fate would have it, for reasons ranging from COVID-19 to worries over global warming, the job is gaining in popularity — even among younger people. 

An hour south of Barcelona, some 20 young people attended shepherding school under a hot June sun. 

One class taught how to use flocks to clear land around the suburbs — they call it “precision grazing.” An instructor explained how out-of-control fires can easily sweep through residential areas. 

But fire prevention isn’t what pushed 24-year-old Aina Solana to leave behind her life in downtown Barcelona, where she’d been a dancer and student. 

“I remember one day walking the streets of Barcelona,” she said. “Looking around, I said to myself, I don’t see beauty here.”

Related: Foragers in Catalonia embrace a new mushroom-hunting season after last year’s strict lockdown

Shepherd-in-training Aina Solana rests with goats on a hot day. Losana has given up city life to reconnect with her roots and with nature.

Credit:

Courtesy of Paroma Basu

Last year, Solana moved to her ancestral home, high in the Pyrenees, where her grandparents had been shepherds. 

She decided to follow their path.

“In Barcelona, I didn’t even know what I was eating or where it came from. Now that I’ve returned to the country, I know that my eggs come from my neighbor. It gives me peace of mind.”

Aina Solana, 24, shepherd-in-training

“In Barcelona,” she said, “I didn’t even know what I was eating or where it came from. Now that I’ve returned to the country, I know that my eggs come from my neighbor. It gives me peace of mind.”

Solana and her classmates are nearly finished with their studies. 

Afterwards, they could choose a solitary life in the mountains, or join a cheesemaking co-op.

But the shepherding gig with the most openings? Leading a so-called fire flock.

Because the rate of forest fires is only likely to increase.

Ukrainians are being discouraged from traveling to the US via Mexico

US President Joe Biden announced the need to “stop dangerous human migration routes” and announced a plan to send refugees seeking the United States to Spain . The head of the White House promises to secure the US-Mexican border and stop the “dangerous journey north.”

Photo: Global Look Press

Biden lashed out at illegal immigration in his speech at the Summit of the Americas, where he and other leaders pledged to end the smuggling of people across the border, writes the Daily Mail.

The President of the United States issued tough remarks amid record immigration that has caused political problems for his administration since his early days in office.

“We need to stop the dangerous and illegal ways people migrate,” he said. Biden delivered a speech in Los Angeles, where he hosted the “Summit of the Americas.”

“Illegal migration is unacceptable,” the US president said, and issued a stern warning to human traffickers: “We're coming for you.”

“If you are hunting desperate and vulnerable migrants for profit, we are coming for you,” the American president warned. “And we will secure our borders, including through innovative coordinated action with our regional partners,” he said.

Biden spoke as yet another migrant caravan headed for the US amid ongoing problems on the Mexican border .

“Mexico, Guatemala, Canada, and Spain are also committing themselves today to expand employment pathways to their countries,” Biden said. “And in addition to securing our border and cleaning up asylum processing in the United States, the Department of Homeland Security is conducting a first-of-its-kind anti-human smuggling campaign in the region.”

According to a White House fact sheet, “Spain will double the number of job paths for Hondurans to participate in Spanish circular migration programs.”

On Friday, the United States released a long list of measures to deal with the migration crisis. The White House is touting a series of programs agreed to by countries across the hemisphere and Spain as an observer that include attracting more guest workers and providing legal pathways for people from poorer countries to work in richer ones. (Here you can see parallels with the scheme developed in the UK, according to which asylum seekers arriving illegally on British soil are supposed to be sent to the African country of Rwanda while their applications are being processed.)

The Biden administration, faced with a record influx of illegal migrants on its southern border, has pledged hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to Venezuelan migrants across the region, reintroduced family visas for Cubans and Haitians, and made it easier to hire workers from Central America.

The announcements made on the final day of the Los Angeles summit are part of a US-led pact dubbed the Los Angeles Declaration that aims to create incentives for countries that host large numbers of migrants and share responsibility across the region. But some political analysts are skeptical of the promises, some of which seem mostly symbolic, significant enough to be significant.

Joe Biden's statements on the migrant issue came shortly after he announced at the end of March that the United States was ready to accept “up to one hundred thousand Ukrainians and other people” forced to leave their homes after the start of the Russian special operation in Ukraine. However, there is a considerable difference between the presidential invitation and the real state of affairs.

A couple of weeks ago, the organizers of the camp for Ukrainian refugees who went to Mexico announced that they would soon close it, and began to dissuade Ukrainians from traveling to this Latin American country, still in Europe and hoping to get to the US through the Mexican border. After the opening of this camp in the eastern part of Mexico City, about a thousand Ukrainians passed through it. Representatives of organizations helping refugees said that Ukrainians who are still in Europe should register for the US government program and not spend money and energy on a trip to Mexico. Before the camp was set up in Mexico City, Ukrainians traveled to Tijuana on the US-Mexico border.

“We ask people from Europe, Ukrainians, to go through the program from Europe, not to come to Mexico, because for them it is much more expensive,” call representatives of the “Unity for Ukraine” program announced by the US government on April 21.

Источник www.mk.ru

Hook:
I can see the big picture
And I wanna come with you
Got a friend bring em with you
That busts rhyme that Rah dagga its hot
I was hot a long time ago, some get it fast, I got it slow.
Finesse the game with precision enterprise the movement
Melting pot where I brew it H-Town chop chop screw it.

Verse:
This is H-town in the Summer big tires on a hummer got smoke for the stoners
If she thick I get up on her
V I P in the corner, shopping in the galleria, seen a fly Seniorita
Prospects and margarita’s, there she go.
Got my girl and got my drank, we don’t care what haters thank, sun is shinning
On the candy paint, and we go together like snoop and dank.
Dank I feeling like a star I feeling like a star.
I be paddling steering handle bars. Hollywood to Spain, we stay in our lane.
Pressure com and go we remain the same. Are you the one I can call my best friend. Hold me down, I will share my dividings. When its real, ride it out til the end, til the end.

Hook:
I can see the big picture
And I wanna come with you
Got a friend bring em with you
That busts rhyme that Rah dagga its hot
I was hot a long time ago, some get it fast, I got it slow.
Finesse the game with precision enterprise the movement
Melting pot where I brew it H-Town chop chop screw it.

Verse 2:
I’ll Do it, if you want me to. I do it.
Ok I can see the top down,
Shades on got my lady and a bag.
Trying new things loyalties the hash tag.
Rolling on the interstate,
Making future moves that’s sweeter than a pound cake.

Rap Verse:
I talking bout cake like Rihanna, I grind hard I want every dollar.
Keep a baby bottle like a toddler, whipping foreign cars on Westheimer.
Watch me take off like a Houston rocket, Lanky frankies all up in my pockets.
Top covertable got to drop it, Farrow gummo shades I be styling.
Hello how you doing I’m the hipster, I hope that you can see the bigger picture.
You know that I am lit just like a swisher, and I’m gifted everyday is Christmas.
You know that I coming back, I hope on the beat and run it like a running back.
Get it jumping like jumping jacks.
And I spent fire now you know you not touching that.
I am not your average rapper, plugged in like car adapters.
Give out blessings like a pastor, balling on them like a raptor.

Hook:
I can see the big picture
And I wanna come with you
Got a friend bring em with you
That busts rhyme that Rah dagga its hot
I was hot a long time ago, some get it fast, I got it slow.
Finesse the game with precision enterprise the movement
Melting pot where I brew it H-Town chop chop screw it.

Let me tell you this story
About the fix i’m in
About an evil Woman
Her heart filled with sin
Says she wants a Cadillac
And a diamond ring
No matter what I give her
There’s always one more thing.

I’m tired of being her gold mine
Tired of being her banker too
Sometimes I wonder baby
Lord just what am I going to do?

She says she wants some jewelry
And a fur coat too
And while i’m at it
How about a house that’s huge?
I said I ain’t made of money baby
What’s a matter with you?
I can settle without this
You Know that it’s true.

I’m tired of being her money tree
Tired of being her sugar daddy too
Sometimes I wonder baby
Lord just what am I going to do?

She says she wants some thoroughbreds
And a trip to Spain
And while you’re at it
Better buy me a plane
She says she ain’t greedy
Just a few things she needs
But let me tell you brother
These ain’t trinkets to me.

I ain’t gonna take it
Gonna knock you to the floor
Don’t bother getting up woman
Cause i’m going out the door.