This is the guardian.Welcome to The Guardian Long Read,showcasing the best long form journalismcovering culture, politics and new thinking.For the text version of this andall our long reads, go toguardian.com longread.The Malia Massacre how a Spanish ENC Haven, Africabecame a deadly flashpoint by Matthew Bremner on the24 June 2022, around 1700 people, most of themasylum seekers from Sudan and South Sudan, filed downthe wooded slopes of Mount Gurugu in northeastern Morocco.They were headed to the enclave of Melia,a Spanish city of some 85,000 people, perchedon the coast of mainland Africa.At first, the migrants met no resistance.That was strange.In the months leading up to that day,moroccan police had repeatedly raided settlements on themountain, where thousands of people had taken refuge.The authorities had also prevented local shopkeepers fromselling food to the migrants and stopped taxidrivers from transporting them to the Spanish consulatein the nearby city of Nador.By mid June, the migrants were feeling trapped.They couldn’t stay where they were for fearof arrest, and they were being blocked fromusing official channels to claim asylum.The way they saw it, they had little choicebut to try to cross the border illegally.Video footage filmed by locals as well as Moroccanand Spanish authorities shows that the migrants reached theMorocca Malia border at around 08:00 a.m.On the morning of the 24 June.They headed to an abandoned border crossing calledBarriocino, which had been closed since the Pandemic,and began climbing the walls surrounding it.Hundreds scrambled over the wire fence on topof the wall and piled into a holdingyard on the Moroccan side of the checkpoint.On one side of the enclosure loomed a locked gate.Beyond the gate, Spain.As more and more migrants enteredthe enclosure, the Moroccan police formeda perimeter around the border post.They lobbed stones and fired rubber bulletsat the migrants and, according to theinvestigative organization Lighthouse Reports, launched at least20 gas canisters into the courtyard.Using a power saw, a few of the migrantsmanaged to break open the locked gate, struggling tosee and breathe because of the tear gas.People rushed the gap to reach the Spanishside of the checkpoint, which triggered a stampede.As some migrants stumbled and toppled, the crowd pressedrelentlessly towards the gate through the tear gas.Those who had fallen were trampled.Bazir, a 24 year old Sudanese man, saw it all.He had been camped out onMount Gurugu for several months.That morning, he was one of a small numberwho had scaled the Moroccan border wall, squeezed throughthe gate and made it over the 5.5 metersborder fence crossing into Spanish territory.He’d ended up on a main road surroundedby olive trees, cacti and unkempt grass.He could see the skyline of milea, highrise apartment buildings, church spires, the sprawling ports.He had little time to contemplate the viewbazier had taken just a few steps intoSpanish territory before he was caught by amember of the Spanish Guadia Civil Police, whoforced him back through the checkpoint into Morocco.As he was being manhandled, bazier sawmigrants hanging from the Spanish border fencelike wet clothes on a washing line.Others were still crammed into the courtyard, theirfaces pressed up against jutting shoulders, their armspinned against sides, their chests squeezed of air.Many were groaning and some had stopped breathing.After Bazier was dragged back across the border, his wristswere bound with plastic handcuffs, and he was forced tolie down on the row beneath the border wall.There, for around 8 hours, with temperaturesreaching 27 degrees Celsius, 81 degrees Fahrenheitin the shade, he and hundreds ofother migrants were dropped like bin bags.They were guarded by Moroccan police in riot gear.Footage shows the police beating the migrants withbatons as they lay on the ground.Bazir was desperate for water.His mouth felt sandy and cracked,but he dared not move.People around him lay motionless.He thought they may be pretending to bedead to escape the vicious beatings being handedout by the Moroccan police officers.Some migrants had concussions and brokenbones, and many needed hospital treatment.But the few ambulances that turned up atthe scene were used to transport dead bodiesto the morgue or attend to injured police.Buses arrived in large numbers.The migrants were loaded on board anddriven to far flung cities throughout Morocco.Bazir, a Sydneym given for his protection, recounted theharrowing events to me nine months later in acramped hotel room in Morocco’s capital, Rabat.Despite the chill of theair conditioning, he was sweating.I suppose we weren’t human anymore, we werejust like animals, he mumbled, wiping his brow.Official figures from that day indicate that ofthe roughly 1700 migrants who attempted to crossthe border, 133 were able to claim asylum.470 individuals like Bazir entered Spanish territorybut were forcibly returned to Morocco.At least 37 people died and77 people remain unaccounted for.The event quickly came to beknown as the Milea Massacre.Spain was quick to play down news reportsthat the tragedy had occurred on its territory.Instead, the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez, congratulatedthe Spanish and Moroccan forces for their workthat day, declaring the 24 June attempted crossinga violent assault on Spanish soil.He later admitted he’d made that statement before he’dseen any of the images from that day.Morocco prosecuted 65 migrants fortheir roles in the crossing.33 of them have already been sentenced toeleven months in prison for damage to propertyand attacks on Moroccan officers, while the remaining32 migrants stand charged with human trafficking, moroccanpolice were also accused of trying to coverup their use of excessive force.The Moroccan Association of Human Rights reportedthat two days after the tragedy, moroccanborder officials had been seen nearby ina cemetery, digging about 20 graves.Earlier this year, I flew from Madridto Milea to see how the territoryhad processed the tragedy of last year.From the plane’s window, the territory’s 12km² about twice the size of Gibraltarappeared as an anomalous patch stitched ontothe African continent by the border fence.As the plane descended, my phone began to buz, chargingme roaming fees as though I had left the EU.Once out of the tiny airport, I stepped intothe dry spring heat and into a waiting taxia battered 1980s silver Mercedes covered in dust.In less than ten minutes I was inthe city center, a mirage of shimmering marblestreets, promenades, palm trees, topri hedges and ornamentalmodernist buildings by Catalan architect Enrich Nieto thatwouldn’t be out of place in Barcelona.The city’s 15th century fort clung tothe coast’s, craggy cliffs like a mollusk.The turquoise Mediterranean mottled with ferries andcargo ships stretched flat to the horizon.For Spaniards from the mainland, Maliacan seem both familiar and not.The local accent is a North African and the Lucian mix?Muslim names are crossed with Spanishdiminutives producing nicknames like Gemalito.Though Spanish is the officialand most spoken language.Arabic and the Berber language Tamasit are common.Mint tea is as popular as beer, lambas common as pork and minarets punctuate theskyline alongside church spires in the occasional synagogue.Almost half of Milea’s population is Catholic.The same proportion is Muslim.The city Jewish community numbers about 1000, whilethere are up to 100 Hindus whose rootsin the city go back to 1890.Easter week processions take place instreets festooned with Ramadan light displays. “  WWW.ARMINIC.COM  “  Despite the Moroccan influence on Melian culture, thecity’s residents think of themselves as Spanish.Dunia almansurim Umpierith, vice president of the MaliaAssembly, told me that locals with Muslim namesfelt hurt whenever they were confused with Moroccansby Spaniards from the mainland.They resented the idea that their livesin Malia as Spanish Muslims required explanation.It people had fought fiercely for that right, she said.Before Spain joined the EU in 1986, it introducednew laws concerning how to obtain Spanish nationality andthe right to live and work there.The legislation favored specific groups tied toSpain’s history and culture, such as LatinAmericans, but excluded Moroccans and Western Saharans,who were also from former Spanish colonies.Consequently, about 14,000 Muslim Malia residents weresuddenly considered foreigners, despite having been bornor living on Spanish territory.This sparked protests and calls fora strike by Muslim workers.The local press printed photos of policepointing guns at a group of Muslimwomen protesting in the city’s main square.Eventually, long term residents were grantedpermanent residence cards and Spanish nationality.From that moment, the city startedto embrace its multicultural makeup.Malia became the city of four cultures, comprising theMuslims, Christians, Jews and Hindus who lived there.Malia’s tourist board logo used to bemade up of four letters corresponding tofour alphabets latin, Arabic, Hebrew and Sanskrit.Tanya Costa, a local journalist, shared an anecdote withme that encapsulated the hybrid nature of milea.At a local skate park, she had observeda young girl wearing a hijab cross herselfbefore diving into a half pipe.These days, though, Malia is less defined byits multiculturalism than by its status as atiny sliver of the European Union in Africa.There is another Spanish territory on the coastof Morocco, Theota, which juts out from Morocco’snorthernmost point across the sea from Gibraltar.Theota, too, has been the siteof dramatic border crossings by migrants.Malia is a border station, a meansto enter Europe without crossing the Mediterranean.In recent years, however, both enclaves have becomeoutposts of Fortress Europe, the term used bycritics of the EU’s harsh immigration policies, whoseprimary function appears to be keeping people out.Melia’s frontier status is unmistakable to any visitor.It has the highest proportion of public employeesin any part of Spain almost 50%, accordingto data from the Office for National Statistics.Police cars and guadia civil four by foursseem to be parked on every street.There are some 1200 border agents and police.Then there’s the military.Malia has about 3000 soldiers stationed in the enclave.Both the army and the Spanish Legion myinbound flight was full of military personnel returningfrom leave with their oversized car key, backpacks,bus cuts, and bulging muscles.The business of migration is woveninto the fabric of everyday life.The Red Cross has offices here, as does the UNrefugee agency UNHCR and a whole host of small NGOs.I met one lawyer pepe Alonzo, who toldme immigration has been an issue Emilia foryears, well before the international press became interested.During the late ninety s and early 2000s, he’doften drive up to the border and park hiscar there at night, waiting for a crossing.I worked long hours back then when I waspreparing court cases, and I would often drive aroundhere at three or four in the morning tosee if there had been a crossing that day.He said he would wait in the dark andtry to help the passing migrants, taking them tothe police station to process their applications.That was before a reception center formigrants was built outside the city.On my second afternoon in Melia, I droveto the Centro de Estantia Temporal de ImmigrantesSETI, a residence for newly arrived immigrants around2 miles from the city center.I was accompanied by Jesus Blasco de Viennara,a local journalist and photographer who has reportedon migration and the Malia border for years.SETI backs onto a prison for young offendersand a lush nine hole golf course.This was where Bazier had hopedto process his asylum application.The center has a capacity for 480 people, butwhen I visited, just three migrants were staying there.For a long time, spain tried to keepmigrants Emilia while their applications were being processed.Asylum seekers received temporary ID cardswith the inscription valid only Emilia.These cards prohibited them from workingor traveling to mainland Spain.The SETI was often overcrowded.In 2015, UNHCR said it didnot comply with international standards.This is not a place people should be in formore than three or four days, the Spanish representative ofthe organization’s high Commissioner said at the time.In 2020, when the Supreme Court in Madridruled that migrants Emilia could travel freely aroundSpain with just a passport and an asylumapplication, most chose to leave.Since then, the SETI has been less busy,except during Spain’s COVID-19 state of emergency.Generally fewer migrants have been stayingin Milea for long periods.Meanwhile, Milea’s permanent residents have done their bestto forget about the migration problem entirely.Blasco sees SETI’s location at the city’sedge as a metaphor for Milea’s psyche.It’s completely removed from city life.While the border is physically close, it’s psychologicallyfar away for many locals, he said.On the Spanish side of the border wall,amid the NGO offices, police stations and militarybases, a parallel world exists, where local businesses,teachers, and town hall civil servants live likeresidents of any mainland Spanish city.In cafes or bars, people wantedto discuss anything but migration.All the press ever report on is the wall, thewall, the wall, nothing else, one resident told me.Wearily.The ordinary Malians couldn’t be expected to bearthe weight of mass suffering every day.He seemed to imply they had their ownnormal lives, and they, no less than mainlandEuropeans, did not much want to think aboutthe human tragedy looming at the border.Thanks for listening to the Guardian Longread.The story continues right after this.Welcome back to The Guardian longread has been Spanishfor more than 500 years, ever since Spain seizedthe city from the Berbers in 1497.In the 19th century, its borders wereformalized in treaties between the Queen ofSpain and the Sultan of Morocco.Spain now designates Milea alongwith Yuta, an autonomous city.But since Morocco gained independence from France in 1956,it has disputed Spain’s claim to both cities.In the years following Moroccan independence, a pactwas established between the two territories, allowing unrestrictedmovement across the border for Mileage and Moroccansfrom the neighboring Nador province.Many of these Moroccans found employment inMilea, often in construction or cross bordertrade, and traveled back and forth daily.In 1986, Spain joined the EU, andlater in 1991, the Schengen area, whichenables passport free travel between European countries.From then on, Spain came under pressure from Brusselsto reduce the flow of migrants entering the countryfrom outside the EU, especially after a surge ofmigration into Milea from Algeria and SubSaharan Africa.In 1995, Spain’s response was to begin construction.  “  WWW.ARMINIC.COM  “  In 1996 of a three meter high chain linkdouble fence spanning 7 miles of the border.The Berlin Wall may just be a memory,wrote the New Straits Times, an international newspaperpublished in Malaysia in August 1998, but Spainis building huge fences to protect itself andsouthern Europe from a flood of African immigrants.The fence was operational by the end of that year.However, Malia’s unforgiving geography, with its rolling hillsand precipitous cliffs, thwarted any attempts to erectthe fence on the actual border with Morocco.The result was a mere approximation of theborder, meaning that some residents of Malia suddenlyfound themselves on the wrong side of thewall, excluded from their own country.Few stories better sum up the strangeness ofMelia than that of Miguel and Jel Hernandez.His family home, Villa Los Abuelos, used to be situated inMalia, but when the new fence was finished in the late90s, he found his house was now in Morocco.In the early 2000s, he moved to a housein the center of Milea, where he still lives.When I visited him, Hernandez, a lanky man in hisseventy s, with wild gray hair and a long beard,showed me piles of legal papers and press clippings documentingthe curious case of Villa Los Obuelos.I remember the day the local police chiefcame to visit me, Hernandez told me.He said, welcome to Morocco.We’re at your service.Hernandez was offered a 1 meter wide passageway betweenhis house and the border, allowing him to enterSpain via the nearest crossing, 50 meters away.Whenever he wanted to enter his own home, he hadto explain himself to a guard and show his ID.The physical evolution of the borderfence tells its own story.As the number of migrants trying to get fromAfrica to Europe increased, so did the fence’s size.And sophistication in 2005, the fence’sheight was increased to 6 meters.In 2014, an anticlimb mesh was installed and sectionsof the fence were expanded with barbed wire.In 2020, in a seemingly humanitariangesture, pedro Sanchez’s government announced theremoval of the barbed wire.They also increased the height of the borderfence to 9 meters in some areas.That same year, at the start of theCOVID-19 Pandemic, the right of Moroccans from Nadorprovince to cross freely into Malia was rescinded.It is yet to be reinstated, and nowall Moroccans need a visa to enter.On my third day in Milea, I visited the barrierChino border crossing with Javier Garcia, a local journalist whohad witnessed the events of the 24 June.Garcia had rushed there just before 10:00 a.m.That morning after hearing reports fromcolleagues about a mass crossing.As he approached the border station, he saw hundreds ofmigrants, the ones who had made it into Spain.Trapped in a small service road next to thefence, guarded by members of the Guadia Civil andnational police, garcia told me that next to themigrants had been groups of local women cleaning upthe debris from the crossing, tear gas canisters, rubberbullets, rocks and migrants clothing.He had also seen Moroccan police.Together with the Guadia civil, they were catchingand returning migrants to Morocco, he said.And once back in Morocco, as videos and testimoniesfrom that day show, the migrants were corralled andshipped as far away from the border as possible.The EU gave Morocco €346,000,000 between 2014 and 2020, withup to €500 million more to be paid until 2027,all in the name of regulating migration flows.It has similar deals withother North African countries.Once a migrant manages to cross a national border, theburden of care shifts from one state to the other.The EU’s logic is simple as long as themigrants are kept in Africa, they are not themoral or practical responsibility of Spain and the EU.These policies have ugly repercussions, asBazier knows all too well.His harrowing journey to Malia began in Sudan at theage of 15, after he witnessed the murder of hisfather, an elder brother, in a tribal conflict.He escaped from his village to live withhis uncle in Sena state, but there hefaced pressure to convert from Christianity to Islam.He endured five years of turmoil beforesaving enough money to leave for Europe.He traveled through Egypt, Libya, Algeria and Morocco.He was detained four times and left fordead in the desert by Algerian authorities.He felt he had been treated with indifference at eachof the UNHCR offices he visited on his journey.After the 24 June tragedy, Pazir was bussed eightand a half hours away to the central Moroccancity of Beni Mele, along with other Sudanese migrants,where he claims he was refused medical treatment andverbally abused by hospital workers.He eventually made it from central Morocco to the westcoast, where he moved from city to city, dependent onthe kindness of strangers for his daily needs.Unlike many of his fellow migrants, who saythey would risk scaling the border fence again,Mazir wanted to attempt the legal path.He contacted local NGOs, who put him in touch with ateam of lawyers based in Madrid who could help him withhis asylum application at the Spanish embassy in Rabat.When we spoke, Bazier had beenwaiting months without a resolution.He went through hell and made it toSpanish land, thinking that would be enough.But now he is in limbo, always on the move incase the authorities try to arrest him constantly reliving the momenthe saw his countrymen dying in the afternoon sun.He told me that after everything he has been through, hejust wants to stop hiding and live a normal life.He expressed this desire in a letter tothe Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez in spiteof everything, I want to have hope.During my stay in Mileage, I encountered severalborder guards enjoying meals at local eateries, pickingup their children from school, exchanging pleasantries outsideMilea’s central mosque before afternoon prayers.Some were local malians, while others wereon rotation from the Spanish mainland.One afternoon, in a cafe near the city center,I met a guadia civil agent who had directexperience of the chaos of the mass crossings.He was willing to talk about what had happened onthe 24 June 2022, but wished to remain anonymous.As we talked, he sipped mint tea from a tall glass.He seemed nervous.It’s overwhelming, he told me.In the heat of the moment, you can’t hear anything.It’s chaos, and all you can do is reactto the situation unfolding in front of you.A longtime resident of Milea, the agentrecounted how the crossings had evolved recently.20 years ago, they were always at night insmall groups, he said, but now it’s different.They come in massive waves, armed withweapons and a plan of attack.The violence, that’s the biggest change.On the 24 June.The crowd were armed with sticksand at least one power tool.In March 2022, there had been twomass border crossings in which approximately 3500migrants tried to cross into Milea, witharound 800 making it into Spanish territory.The agent and other officers, along with severalmigrants, had been injured in the crossing.A migrant fell from the fence andcrushed my leg, he told me.The agent understood it wasn’t feasible tohave thousands of offices in Milea forjust three mass border crossings a year.But the border guards felt thatthe government had abandoned them.To deal with this new reality, there needsto be clear protocol for all the Spanishsecurity agencies that legally protects us.  “  WWW.ARMINIC.COM  “  He said.The Spanish government claims to respectthe basic rights of foreign nationalswho enter the country illegally.But special legislation enacted in Theota and Meliaallows Spanish border officers to expel refugees andmigrants without due process and without considering therisks they may face upon return.This is against international law.Specifically, it violates the principle ofnonruthulmo, which prohibits returning individuals tojurisdictions where they may face persecutionor human rights violation.According to the Spanish Ombudsman, an office responsiblefor protecting the rights and freedoms of citizens,on the 24 June 2022, the Spanish authoritiesillegally returned 470 migrants to Moroccan territory.Representatives of the Guadia Civil and theNational Police told me that their actionson the 24 June were beyond reproach.They pointed to the state prosecutor’s investigation publishedin December 2022, which noted that the interveningagent’s actions did not increase the risk tothe life and physical integrity of the migrants,so they cannot be charged with the crimeof involuntary manslaughter.The prosecutor claimed that the officers were unawareof the stampede, so at no time couldthey have imagined the possibility that there arepeople in a risky situation requiring their assistance.In the aftermath of the fatal crush, the SpanishInterior Minister claimed that the closed border post wasa no man’s land beyond Spain’s jurisdiction.Yet the Spanish land registry record showsthat 13,097 barriocino, including the esplanade onthe border crossing and the fence onwhich some migrants perished, falls within theSpanish domain and is the state’s property.Nonetheless, Spanish authorities continued to claim thatno migrants had died on its territory.In other words, it wasn’t Spain’s or the EU’s problem.On my last day, Emilia, I stood on ahill on the enclave’s western edge, above the city,above a minaret rising from the Moroccan neighborhood ofFahana, and above the nine hole golf course.The morning call to prayer rang out from Moroccoand meandered over the velvety green fairways and amongthe rustling palm trees, the view brought to minda famous photograph taken near here in 2014.In the photo, two individuals are playing golf, whilejust a few meters away, a dozen migrants arestraddling the border fence, a border guard in pursuit.One golfer can be seen casting asidelong glance at the migrants while herplaying partner focuses on her game.The photograph captured the essence of milea, a placeperched on the cusp of two jarring realities, tryingto block out its disquieting role keeping the restof the world out of Europe.Thanks again for listening to the Guardianlong read that was the Malia massacre.How a Spanish enclave inAfrica became a deadly flashpoint.By Matthew Bremner, read by Aaron BlairMangat and produced by Nicola Alexandru.The executive producer was Ellie Buri.Support for this article was provided bya grant from the Pulitzer Centre.For more Guardian long reads in text anda selection in audio, go to theguardian longread.