In another time, what the city of Mérida in Extremadura and its mayor Antonio Rodríguez Osuna did would have made headlines across Spain. It is extraordinary that a relatively small regional capital is taking a step forward and offering to host no fewer than 200 migrants who arrive in the Canary Islands with everything they have.
At another time it would have been easy to see this offer as the profound gesture of solidarity that it is. Beyond their possible right to asylum or their possible deportation by the authorities, we are talking about desperate people arriving in places where reception capacities are overwhelmed. Women like Sarr and Sainey, whose moving story María Martín told in this medium a few days ago.
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At another time, Rodríguez Osuna’s stance could have been described as patriotic. Because patriotism is more than just waving the flag next to a goat. Without thinking twice, Mérida participates in sharing a legal and human responsibility that belongs to the entire European Union. Furthermore, he helps an autonomous community governed by parties different from his own.
But we don’t live in another time, but in this one. And in that time, Mérida’s offer was met with a campaign of insults, lies and threats. With Trump’s “Put them in your house!”, that lazy version of MAGA – the acronym for “Make America Great Again”. With the preventative demonization of foreign children, which was not even intended. With a demand for disapproval from the mayor that is reminiscent of the Vichy times. With a selective indignation that denounces this councilor but forgets the hosting agreement between the Extremadura government of the PP-Vox and the responsible ministry.
When asked why he entered this garden, Rodríguez Osuna offered all sorts of economic, humanitarian and social arguments. “I took this political risk because I could and because I had to,” he says. But I think the key to this whole matter lies in this other sentence from the mayor, which describes a deep-rooted instinct in his people and explains why the residents of Mérida have massively supported him: “[Extremadura] “It is a migrant society (…) and we have suffered from the same problems that migrants have suffered throughout history, and therefore the society of Extremadura is much more mature than the speeches of this far-right formation.”
I put them in my house because they are us. I don’t know if it deserves a headline, but it certainly deserves respect.
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