With the non-stop arrival of illegal immigrants at Motril Port, the Central Government is thinking of turning the old Motril Air Base into an illegal immigrant holding centre.
That’s right; Motril has an air base which is now closed down and used to be the home of the EVA-9 (Airspace Surveillance Squadron). However, it was never an aerodrome or had an airfield; it was a Spanish Air Force radar station set up in 1972 in the Conjuro area, on the road to Lújar. It was closed down in 2010.
Anyway, back to the plans to use it as an illegal-immigrant, holding centre. To give you an idea just how many arrivals Motril Port is handling, over just four days in November 220 people arrived. With this massive influx the authorities were toying with the idea of using the Municipal Sports Centre to temporarily house them.
The official name for one of these holding centres is a Centro de Atención Temporal, where new arrivals are kept for the first 72 hours whilst they are identified. The existing one in the port can only house 90 immigrants, so for the last few months there has been a search for a solution.
The Central Government had recently reopened an obsolete prison in Archidona (Axarquia) where illegal immigrants were held, which was a controversial move, especially after one of the immigrants died there under circumstances that are still being investigated. Following the death, the prison was emptied and closed down again.
The EVA-9 installations would have to be transferred from the Ministry of Defence to the Ministry of the Interior and then adapted to its new use. There’s a lot to be done – it doesn’t have water and electricity at the moment, for example.
However, there is concern in Motril that what the Government wants is to set up a CIE (Centro de Internamiento de Extranjeros) and not just a CETI (Centros de Estancia Temporal de Inmigrantes): the former is semi permanent whilst the latter is only for the first 72 hours.
In fact, the PP opposition party in Motril, despite being the same political party as the one controlling the Central Government, has rejected the idea saying that the installations are inadequate and that the existing CETI in the port should be enlarged. They consider the terminology being thrown around concerning the abandoned airbase sounds suspiciously like a CIE.
This suspicion is reinforced by the fact that after the scandal concerning the Archidona Prison being used as a CIE the Central Government has made it clear that it is searching for a site in Eastern Andalucia…
(News: Motril, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)