BARCELONA, Spain – Spain’s autonomous Catalonia region said it is eager to take in more refugees from the war in Syria, while criticizing the central government in Madrid for being too restrictive and miserly over accepting refugees.
“We are interested in participating, we would like the state (the Spanish government) to call us and make an action plan together in this respect,” Spain’s Europa Press quoted the Catalan director general of immigration Xavier Bosch as saying.
Bosch said a joint action plan is possible with European funds and money from the Spanish government and Catalonia’s own autonomous government.
He criticized the government in Madrid as being “very restrictive” and miserly over taking in refuges, saying that Spain is accepting far less war refugees than other European countries, such as Germany.
“The hosting of refugees has a positive side for host countries and Spain has not understood this,” said Bosch, who called for Catalonia to be more active in this regard.
He remembered when thousands of Catalans were exiled in Mexico after the Spanish civil war in 1939 and contributed to the progress of that country with their talent.
He also criticized the European Union for discussing refugee quotas, saying they were treating people as “merchandise.”
Bosch said that asylum laws in Spain allow the central government to delegate authority to autonomous regions in Spain to make their own decisions about accepting refugees, but that the rightist ruling party in Madrid is not taking that into consideration.
At a recent European summit on refugees, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy opposed sharing a quota of 40,000 refugees among European countries.
UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Antonio Guterres has urged the international community, including Western states, to open their borders to Syrian and Iraqi refugees.
An annual report report by the UNHCR said the number of people forcibly displaced at the end of 2014 by war, conflict and persecution had risen to a staggering 59.5 million, compared to 51.2 million a year earlier and 37.5 million a decade ago.
The report said Syria is the world's biggest producer of both internally displaced people (7.6 million) and refugees (3.88 million at the end of 2014), making the Middle East the world's largest producer and host of forced displacement.
