Public Project
CLANDESTINE BOARDING
In 2013 dozens of children and teenagers, mostly from Morocco but including some from Algeria, lived in the shelter of the breakwater of the port of Melilla, a Spanish city in the north of Morocco. Every night they attempted to climb a 30-foot concrete wall to gain access to the port and try to sneak onto one of the ships sailing from Melilla to the Spanish mainland.
They lived under extremely precarious conditions, sleeping and eating amongst the rocks and surrounded by the debris left by the passage of hundreds of kids over time. The youngest were only ten years old, the oldest were in their early twenties.
Some succeed, others didn’t. Of those who reached the coasts of Andalucia, some managed to remain in Europe but others claimed they were returned by force to Morocco. All of them spent years in this small Spanish enclave in northern Africa while trying to enter Europe.
Text by Santi Palacios
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