Spain’s refugee commission slams ‘inhumane’ conditions for asylum seekers at Madrid airport

OVIEDO, Spain

The Spanish Commission for Refugees (CEAR) on Monday denounced the “inhumane” living conditions for nearly 400 asylum seekers at the Madrid airport, calling for urgent measures to guarantee their human rights. 

Since August, there has been a spike in the number of people soliciting international protection during layovers at the Madrid Barajas Airport.

According to Spanish daily El Pais, the airport saw an unprecedented 847 international protection requests between Dec. 1 and Jan. 15.

The rapid increase in arrivals even caused Spain’s interior minister to impose new transit visa restrictions on Kenyan travelers on Saturday.

According to El Pais reports, around 650 Somalian citizens have paid around €400 ($435) for a Kenyan passport, which allows them to buy tickets to Latin America with a layover in Spain.

At the same time, a growing number of Moroccan and Senegalese citizens are using layovers in Spain to ask for international protection.

This has caused chaos at the Madrid airport, where the areas to hold those seeking protection are overflowing, according to the NGO CEAR.

This is even after Spain’s interior minister added new areas and hired more staff to interview potential refugees.

“Since there aren’t enough beds, many people are sleeping on blow-up mattresses on the floors in common areas (not in rooms), and even sometimes sharing beds. This undermines their right to privacy and family, as well as their human dignity,” said Elena Munoz, coordinator of CEAR’s legal department, in a statement.

On Friday, the Spanish ombudsman also visited the Madrid airport, telling journalists that authorities must “urgently set up the necessary space with dignified conditions.”

CEAR also complained about the delays in processing the claims.

According to the organization, of the 390 people stuck in “undignified” conditions at the airport, around 182 of them have not been able to formalize their claims yet due to delays. They are mostly from Senegal, Morocco, Somalia, Venezuela, and Colombia, according to CEAR.

The long delays, which reached up to 18 days in December, according to CEAR, violate European directives that stipulate that asylum requests should be registered within three to 10 days.

CEAR urged Spain to improve the conditions for those trying to claim asylum by offering more human and material resources. It also urged Spain to drop the newly imposed transit visa condition for Kenyan citizens, which CEAR says “only makes it harder for people to access international protection.”

The last request may be particularly difficult. On Friday, Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska traveled to Morocco to discuss the growing number of claimants in Spain’s airports. There, he told the press: “If we have to introduce transit visas, we will.”

Marlaska also criticized migrants’ “fraudulent” use of layovers in airports.

However, for many, this is the safest route to travel to Spain.  

Deadliest migration route

In 2023, the majority of the 57,000 migrants who reached Spain irregularly by land or sea took the dangerous Atlantic route from West Africa to the Canary Islands.

According to the Interior Ministry, nearly 39,910 arrived on that route. Meanwhile, the organization Walking Borders said 6,618 people died trying, which would make it the deadliest migration route on Earth.

In 2023, Spain received a total of 163,218 international protection requests, up 37% compared to 2022 and the highest number since Spain’s Office of Asylum and Refugees (OAR) opened in 1922, according to the office.