I begin my African journey in the Alboran Sea, in the western
Mediterranean. I cross the 95 nautical miles separating Almeria from
Melilla by ferry with my car. Melilla is one of the two strategic
enclaves that Spain still mysteriously holds in Africa.
 A Moroccan family prepares to cross the Alboran Sea by ferry. |
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I am a bit nervous because I am leaving behind my girlfriend, my friends, and my family. During the seven-hour journey, I concluded that the world of Journalism
is deteriorating. Instant office news seems to serve the interests of a
single person and their convenient friends. The utopian ideals of
helping the needy or keeping those in power in check have vanished. As
if that weren’t enough, office sycophants backstab for personal gain.
Power drives the cynics -those who likely had a difficult childhood- to
madness.
A dark outlook looms over the journalistic savannah. Amid frothy
musings, the time has come to uncover other realities and to observe the
small creatures in their natural habitat, not from an office. Africa
has been waiting for a long time.
Melilla is a unique European city, an architectural experimentation
laboratory spanning just 12 square kilometers, where Christians,
Berbers, Jews, Hindus, and Muslims coexist. Muslims now make up more
than half of the population. With five walled enclosures, the small autonomous city has belonged to
the Kingdom of Spain for over five centuries. What began as an
impregnable bastion, Melilla La Vieja, eventually became the Golden
Triangle of Modernism at the beginning of the 20th century.
Thanks to architect Enrique Nieto, a disciple of Gaudí, Melilla is the
Spanish city with the second most modernist heritage after Barcelona. It
also hosts the only active bullring in Africa, known as the ‘mosque of
bullfighting’.
Seeing The Fence strikes me deeply. In 1971, a wire fence was installed
due to a cholera outbreak in Morocco, following the distance marked by
the shots of the cannon El Caminante in 1862. The current fence began construction in the late 20th century, during
the first term of José María Aznar.
Since then, bars, razor wire (known
as concertinas), security cameras, and all sorts of paraphernalia have
been added. Thousands of people have attempted to jump over it to enter
Europe; some even swim from the spectacular beaches of the neighboring
country.
The most tragic incident occurred in June 2022 when around 2,000 people,
mostly Sudanese, attempted to cross the Barrio Chino border post. After
police intervention and subsequent abandonment of the immigrants, at
least 37 people died and 76 went missing. Neither Morocco nor Spain
seriously investigated what happened.
After a lengthy wait in traffic, I finally arrive at the Beni-Ensar
border post, the only one still open post-coronavirus.
I’m quite
nervous, especially since I have a drone hidden in the car. We’ll see what happens. Inshallah.
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