Almería province, Spain (CNN) — On a hot sunny summer afternoon, Amoateng Foster leans against a table in a makeshift open-air classroom in southern Spain, facing outward toward the improvised student seats. This is not an unfamiliar setting for Foster, 44, who was a math teacher in Ghana before making the perilous journey through the Sahel toward Libya, and then across the Mediterranean into Italy, finally arriving in Spain.
He now lives in an informal settlement for migrants in Almería province, where he and thousands of other workers toil in seemingly countless greenhouses across the sun-baked region to produce the fruit and vegetables that sustain Europe during the winter. The conditions are harsh and the pay, for those in a more precarious situation, is terrible.
“It’s not easy being here if you don’t have proper documentation,” he said, taking stock of his life in Spain. Like many across the African continent and beyond, he was drawn to Europe by the promise of a better job, a better life. But reality has not lived up to his expectations, proving immeasurably hard and degrading in many ways.
“If you are outside the fence, you may think that is rosy here,” he said. “It’s not rosy here.”
And the more he shows us of Don Domingo de Arriba, his current home, the more evident that becomes.
Hundreds of people live alongside Foster in squalor, in a makeshift neighborhood built with whatever brick, mortar, tire or piece of plastic they could find. It’s a surreal scenario, with no official electricity supply or running water, something you wouldn’t expect to see in Europe in the 21st century.
CNN has identified at least four of these settlements in the area around Níjar, northeast of the city of Almería.
“Look at the environment that we live in. It’s not good, but we are managing simply because we have found ourselves here, and it’s not easy for us to go back,” Foster said.
‘We are all children of god’
As men, women and children flooded across the border between Morocco and Spain, into the autonomous city of Ceuta at the end of July, European populists and anti-immigrant politicians capitalized on the shocking images of human desperation. They also prompted several right-leaning governments in Europe to criticize the current Spanish government, specifically its approach to migration.
There has also been growing backlash by populist politicians against charities and other organizations operating on the front line of this torrent of human suffering, with some critics accusing them of creating the conditions that attract more migrants.
“All we do is help those who have nothing,” said Sister Francisca, 80, the coordinator for the local chapter of the Mercedarian Sisters of Charity, a Catholic religious community, responding to the criticism.
Neither we, nor any other organization that supports immigrants, is the reason they come,” she said. “They are not looking for a piece of bread. They’re looking for a more dignified life and a job where they can fulfill themselves, where they can earn money and send it to their families.”
Her organization assists recent arrivals with language lessons and skills workshops to help them find their footing in Spain. But crucially it also distributes food baskets donated by local supermarkets and charities to those most in need.
“Anyone can come to our door. … The most common thing is that they ask us for is a sandwich, and they tell us they’re hungry. It’s a basic necessity,” Sister Francisca said.
At the group’s food distribution center in San Isidro, her colleague, 61-year-old Sister Estella, is preparing and handing out food baskets. She checks each person’s identification details against a database — to have a sense of how frequently people are visiting the center — and then calls them one by one.
“We’re very happy to do it because people really need it, to eat, to survive,” she said. “But it’s still painful to see.”
On busier days, the sisters say they are able to help around 50 families. When donations are low, it’s around 20.
Outside the center was 36-year-old Amal, a Moroccan mother-of-two, who left her children with her mother and sister when she came to Spain seven months ago to pick strawberries. A disagreement with her employer saw her lose her job, she said, and now she’s desperate for any kind of work.
“It’s difficult. … There’s no work, no place to live, no papers. My kids are far away,” she said, holding back tears as she flicked through pictures of her children on her phone.
Restoring a sense of dignity for people like Amal, whose vulnerability is why she didn’t want us to use her last name, is the main goal of Sister Francisca’s organization.
“A simple gesture, a glance, reaching out. It can make a difference. It can lead to saying, ‘You’re just like me,’” the nun told CNN. “We are elderly, we are poor, but we try to raise the standard of living for these people. We are all children of God, and we all have the right to dignity and respect.”
The promise of Europe
Although overall irregular migration numbers were down over the previous year across Europe in the first five months of this year, many continue to risk their lives to reach the continent, and some routes do show an increase.
One of those is what Frontex, the European Union’s border agency, defines as the Western Mediterranean route, which includes crossings from Algeria and Morocco into southern Spain, including the region around Almería.
This area is known as Europe’s vegetable garden for the more than 3.5 million tons of fresh produce it delivers to European markets every year, enough to sustain around 500 million people, according to some estimates.
“A few years ago, there were no greenhouses, and there were no immigrants either,” Sister Francisca recalled. “Now there’s plenty of work at the greenhouses. When they open, people come.”
Depending on the time of the year, the greenhouses produce peppers, tomatoes, watermelons or cucumbers, among other smaller crops, across an expanse so vast they can be seen from space, earning the region another, slightly less complimentary nickname – the “Sea of Plastic.”
But with demanding intermediaries and powerful supermarket chains vying to sell at the cheapest possible price, business owners in Almería say they’re forced to rely on cheap labor if they are to make any kind of profit. And that’s where immigrants like Amal or Foster come in.
“They need us,” he said.
Government data suggests more than 70,000 people are registered with social security as working in the agriculture business in Almería. Unions and NGOs say official numbers don’t account for the significant number of undocumented migrants who are also involved in the agriculture business. Their estimates suggest there are more than 110,000 workers, 90% of whom they believe to be foreign.
Those with their paperwork in order often earn at least the minimum wage of 8 euros ($9.25) per hour, even if there are reports of exploitation. But some of those without documentation told CNN they sometimes make little more than half of that.
“You work in a hot environment, you kneel down, you work continuously just like that, and they give you five euros,” Foster said. “How much can you save?”
Other workers CNN spoke with shared similar figures, suggesting some business owners would go as low as four euros per hour.
The government says it is trying to change the situation, not just here but across the country, introducing an amnesty program and offering nearly half a million undocumented migrants who had been in the country for at least five months, a chance to get their papers in order.
Rise of the far right
The influx of people has brought transformation to some places in the form of restaurants, shops and mosques catering to their needs. Where before Spanish was the only language, signage in Arabic and French has appeared. And despite the apparent need for that migration, the area around the city of Almería has seen a significant rise in anti-migrant sentiment. Xenophobic graffiti reading “no Muslims,” visible in some places, is an obvious expression of the tension brewing beneath the surface.
It was in southern Spain’s Andalusia region, which encompasses Almería and other provinces, that Spain’s radical right-wing party Vox made its first regional gains in 2018, catapulting it to the national stage.
Andalusia is one the areas of Spain with the largest percentage of foreign residents. A large portion of them end up working in the agriculture and hospitality sectors but among those coming from abroad are also retirees from northern Europe.
Nearly a decade later, the populist movement has become strong, emboldened to employ an increasingly aggressive narrative towards the immigrant community in the region, especially Muslims.
In the Almería suburb of La Cañada, one of Vox’s strongholds, those talking points are producing results. Earlier this year the radical right-wing party finished second in regional elections in Almería, surpassing the center-left Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez at a local level.
In this quintessentially Spanish working class-neighbourhood, change has come too fast for many, even if the overall number of arrivals from North Africa is coming down and one study by independent think-tank Funcas suggests 90% of irregular migrants in Spain actually come from Latin America.
“These are people who don’t want to integrate,” one resident who gave his name as Rosendo, 68, said. “I have two (working for me) but they just don’t want to.”
“Let those who want to work and have papers come, and that’s it, the rest is an invasion,” said local resident Francisco, 79. “I believe it’s an invasion, but without guns.”
Their remarks are familiar echoes of the far-right tropes that have taken hold not just in Spain, but also in discourse all over Europe. Across the continent, this same paradox – where certain types of migration are needed but not wanted – and the debate around it continues to play out, increasingly louder.
For now, the current Spanish government is powering through that noise, refusing to reverse course on its regularisation program and defending what prime minister Sánchez says is a “sensible, fair and responsible” migration policy.
“The government has seen that they need our help, that we are helping them. And they are also helping us,” Foster said. “It’s a mutual benefit.”
Joe Duran contributed to this report.
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