"I promise to pay the sum of 40,000 dollars to my Aunt Iveve, and I, Jennifer, declare that I will obey all instructions until the said quantity has been paid, and that I will tell nothing to the police. If I break any rules, Aunt Iveve has the right to kill me, and my family in Nigeria."
This is the contract signed by a 20-year-old Nigerian woman who works as a prostitute in Madrid's Casa del Campo park. Last year, she travelled north from Benin City, assisted by a mafia which sells its services with promises of relief from the grinding poverty of sub-Saharan Africa. Morocco, only a few kilometres from Tarifa across the straits of Gibraltar, acts as a funnel for human traffic into Spain, which in turn offers a point of entry into the rest of the EU.
When Jennifer arrived at the Moroccan coast, she was hustled into a fragile raft with 30 others, and endured the terrifying 10hour journey to Spain. Last year, 58 people are known to have drowned making this journey, and another 1,087 had to be rescued from the sea. The real casualty figures are much higher. Jennifer survived and, following instructions, travelled to Madrid, where she encountered her Aunt Iveve, a prostitute who had graduated to the role of madame for the prostitution ring. We know about Jennifer because the police raided Iveve's flat last month, and found dozens of contracts like the one quoted above.
The story was widely reported by a horrified Spanish press. Every day, however, the same newspapers continue to carry several pages of advertisements for sex, often explicitly unsafe sex, with prostitutes. Iveve has been arrested, but Jennifer continues to work in the Casa del Campo. One madame has been put out of circulation, but the mafia - and the local demand which sustains it - remain in operation. If she survives, she might have paid off her "debt" in five years' time.
Jennifer might seem like an exception, an unfortunate caught up in a particularly risky and notoriously exploitative trade. In fact, her story is probably not untypical of the thousands of illegal immigrants coming to Spain in search of work in sectors like agriculture and domestic service. The same basic forces operate. The societies where the immigrants originate are desperately poor or collapsing; there is a huge demand for cheap labour in Spain; and organisations dealing in human traffic have sprung up inside and outside Spain to service this demand. The illegality of the whole operation means that many immigrants contract massive "debts" before they even arrive in Spain. The penalties for defaulting are rarely as dramatic as in Jennifer's case, but they are severe, and there are allegations that Spanish farmers collaborate in enforcing payment.
Almeria is an Andalusian province with very high numbers of illegal immigrants. When The Irish Times asks the police and the Guardia Civil there to comment on such mafias in the area, their courteous refusals are revealing.
"Lots of police would love to talk to you, but they would be crucified for doing so," one officer says.
"This subject is so hot, so delicate, that we would be afraid of being misinterpreted," the Guardia Civil tells me. "You'll have to talk to Madrid."
In Madrid, Enrique Fernandez Miranda, secretary of state for immigration, puts a smooth and coherent gloss on a situation that looks anything but manageable. He is charged with implementing a controversial new immigration law passed earlier this year, in the teeth of criticism that the centre-right Partido Popular government had capitulated to xenophobia.
"The opposition portray us as racists," says Fernandez Miranda. "But Spain has been inoculated against racism by the Franco dictatorship. There is no extreme-right party in the Spanish parliament. We want Spain to continue be a country which receives immigrants. But we want this development to happen legally and openly, in an orderly fashion."
He believes the previous law was so liberal that it acted like a magnet for massive illegal immigration. The numbers of known illegals crossing the straits rose from 3,000 to 15,000 in 12 months. But what about criticism that the new law denies basic human rights, like freedom of association, to illegal immigrants, and may be unconstitutional? "We believe these are social rights, not human rights, and can only be acquired by citizens," he says. His government is certainly making a major effort to regularise the situation of illegals who are already in Spain. It has considered 250,000 requests for work and residence permits, and has conceded most of them, even agreeing to reconsider each of the 27,000 cases initially rejected.
However, Fernandez Miranda insists that this must be the last mass-regularisation of illegals. From now on, he says, there will be a sector-by-sector analysis of labour needs, followed by negotiations with countries such as Morocco, Ecuador and Poland to offer visas to suitably qualified workers. It sounds wonderful.
Back in Almeria, things do not look so promising on the ground. In February 2000, there was a savage outbreak of racist rioting in the town of El Ejido, with dozens of Moroccan businesses and hundreds of Moroccans burned out of their homes. A year later, only one of the non-governmental organisations which services immigrants has dared to reopen in the town centre. Its director, Mercedes Garcia, was voted "worst woman of the year" on local television. Her teenage children were recently terrorised when their home was surrounded all night by a hostile mob. No charges were brought, as no charges have been brought against those who burned out the Moroccans last year. El Ejido's town council is controlled by the Partido Popular, but Fernandez Miranda says it is "absolutely unjust" to accuse the local party of racism. The proof, he says, is that last year's events have not repeated themselves.
Nor do things look much better where the other parties are concerned. Prominent Socialists and Catalan nationalists both made openly xenophobic comments during the week this article was researched. Spain faces an enormous challenge, and a great opportunity, in coping with the large numbers of immigrants which its economy badly needs. It is much too early to be complacent about the outcome.
