Pedro Sanchez, Prime Minister of Spain talking to the press after an informal migration summit at the EU Commission in Brussels, Belgium on June 24, 2018. NurPhoto/Press Association. All rights reserved.
European social democratic parties of the most populated EU countries have been trudging through stagnant water for the last ten years and will certainly keep struggling in the next decades too, unless a game change occurs. That game changer could go by the name of Pedro Sanchez, currently Spain’s prime minister, and his attempt to revolutionize Spain’s approach towards migration.
Since the end of the 1990s, the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla have been surrounded by fences to protect Spain’s territorial integrity and expressly to keep migrants out. During the last 7 years of the Rajoy government the attitude towards the issue was not exactly an example of light touch regulation and Spain became infamously known for its firm-handed migration policy, which has led to frequent riots and consistent skirmishes between the Spanish patrol police and the migrants trying to breach the fences
