Text written by: Father Joan Manuel Serra, former assistant priest in the Sagrada Familia Parish of Barcelona (one of the many persons in Barcelona concerned about the dramatic situation of so many "illegal" immigrants").

 Purpose: To achieve, through the effort of those in government and of simple citizens, a radical change in the treatment of "illegal" immigrants. To ensure that minimum rights such as decent housing will be garanteed.

George Washington

This letter is to tell you the striking story of a man from Ghana, a friend of ours, Samuel, who found himself wandering in the streets of Barcelona as an illegal immigrant and ended his days in a most horrible way.

In a very cold winter, a group of twenty-one Ghanians came to the Parish of the Sagrada Familia, where I was the assistant priest. They came because they had been told that there was somebody who would be willing to help them get off the street, were they were sleeping, suffering severe cold.

With God’s help and courage, we decided to set out to help them as much as we could. First, we got blankets for all of them, and we even spent a night with them in the street, with our blanket. Then we experienced the horrible cold at five in the morning when they get up to run into the subway, which opens at that hour. We told ourselves that it really was too cold to be in the street, and so we started calling provincials of religious congregations asking for a place of refuge for our twenty-one brothers (that’s what we considered them from the beginning).

Rapidly a religious order, the Marianist Brothers, agreed to open a big school first, and then a vacant center for street children (it was during the Christmas break) to have them sleep there for a few weeks. With the very generous economic help of other religious orders, we were able to spend a few more weeks off the street in pensions and youth hostels. However, we were spending too much money and the group had grown to 36.

We found a cheaper and longer lasting solution: to help pay the rent of two apartments of Ecuatorian immigrants where our friends went just to sleep. This lasted for months, until it became impossible for us to keep getting some 1000 euros monthly.

Samuel, a very pleasant and religious Ghanian, had joined the group coming to sleep in one of the apartments. I remember him (after I told them we had to leave since we could not pay the rent any longer) kneeling, looking up to me and asking me: "Pastor, what will happen to us when we find ourselves back in the street?"

I told them about the existence of some abandoned military buildings in the outskirts of the city, where many immigrants had found housing at 0 euros rent. Many of them decided to go there, although they realized the danger it meant of being arrested and deported.

Samuel and his friend Ansu, also from Ghana, shared a room in one of those gloomy buildings. I visited with them several times; I confess also out of human curiosity for that most strange but fascinating place. People from many nationalities had found refuge from cold and rain there: Rumanians, Russians, Ecuatorians, Chileans, Colombians, Morrocans, Algerians, SouthSaharians, and also a mixed group of Western Okupas. It was this later group who, through their legal advise, were able to avoid the army from throwing everyone out by force: people had been living there for more than a year, and therefore it was their legal home. Only a judge could ask them to leave.

However, it was not a place you looked forward to go back at night: it was too dark and too dangerous. I myself, one night, was almost seriously woulded by a violent drunkard who didn’t like my visit.

On Christmas night, last year, Samuel, decided he would not go back to sleep to the abandoned army buildings, and stayed and slept in the street close to where the main group had been sleeping two years earlier.

However, somehow he got in a fight with a street gang. They beat him up and left him half dead. The same gang returned some hours later, threw some gasoline on him, and burned him alive. People coming out of an early Christmas morning mass were witnesses of the dramatic and horrible end to Samuel’s life.

On the following day, the news brought consternation to the whole city of Barcelona. We are not at all used to such, horror-movie events. For most people it was the horrible case of a supposedly half drunk illegal Ghanian being brutally killed in the middle of the city by a street gang. However, for me, it was the case of my friend Samuel, whom I had come to love, and who, kneeling, had not too long ago said to me: "Pastor, what will happen to us when we find ourselves back in the street?"

I keep thinking back to that and I keep telling myself that Samuel will not have died, in such a horrible way, in vain. His vital experience, must be a turning point in the current policy in favor of so many illegal immigrants in the big cities of the rich and prosperous Western World.

This is were I believe that all of us, politicians and simple civilians, can and must do something. Immigration laws normally provide for the decent housing of illegal immigrants while their situation is being resolved. I know that millions of euros are budgeted for that purpose every year, but nobody seems to control or demand the actual investment of that money. Such investments are actually done in European countries like France, Ireland, Holland, etc.

Moreover, I believe that the great numbers of displaced people from the miserable South to the rich North, should be considered as refugees of a non-declared economic war between the North and the South. They come to us, the North, in such great numbers because of the scandalous difference between our standard of living and theirs. A scandalous difference mainly due to our abuse in a very unjust world-trade system: high benefits in the sale of products bought at ridiculous prices. Moreover, the participation of the North in many of the corrupt governments in the South (a corruption which facilitates the robbery of their natural resources) is widely known.

Realizing and recognizing this, the North should ensure the refuge, protection and humane treatment of those displaced by the dramatic economic unbalance!

With the help and courage from God may we be inspired to take the appropriate actions to ensure that Samuel will not have died in vain such a terrible death.

Fr. Juan Manuel Serra

joan_manuel_s@hotmail.com

Sagrada Família, Barcelona, February 15^th, 2004

(Updated, October 17th, 2005).

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