More than 400 illegal immigrants went on hunger strike in a sports hall in Seville yesterday to embarrass British Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair and other European Union leaders gathering in the city for a summit that will concentrate on immigration.
The hunger strikers at the Pablo de Olavide University sports pavilion, who mostly work as farm labourers, were demanding permits to let them work legally.
The hunger strikers, mostly young, single men from Algeria, Morocco, Mali, the Ivory Coast and Senegal, have all spent more than a year working illegally in Spain. "We are here because we want work papers, that is all," said Moussa Diallo (35), an English teacher who arrived in Spain from Mali on a tourist visa 11 months ago.
Farmers are happy to employ illegal immigrants who, in the strawberry farms, earn $27 for a 6½-hour day, a good wage in the countries they come from.
The farmers who employ them avoid paying the social security and other expenses legal workers require.
Spaniards themselves are not interested in backbreaking, low-paid work in the fields. "There is lots of work in Spain. That is why I came here. Now I want to be able to work legally," Mr Diallo said. To him, and his fellow hunger strikers, who have spent nearly two weeks sleeping on dirty mattresses and strips of cardboard in a basketball court at the university, this does not seem an extraordinary demand.
The organisers of this protest, a type of clandestine union for illegal immigrants, claim it is a coincidence that they have come to the place where EU leaders plan to take European immigration policy closer to the "fortress" model, designed to keep them out.
But they have become a cause célèbre for the anti-globalisation protesters who have gathered for their own, alternative summit events.
The protest has also become a serious irritant to Jose Maria Aznar's conservative People's Party government, which has thrown a police cordon around the Pablo de Olavide University where the immigrants are staying.
Cars approaching the university are stopped and checked in case they might be carrying any more illegal immigrants. Those who have tried to join the protest in recent days have been chased down by mounted police and hauled off to the cells.
The Interior Minister, Mr Mariano Rajoy, has said that even though the government gave way to a similar protest in south-west Spain last year, it would not budge this year. "These people have been manipulated into coming here," he said. "The government will stick to the law." That law - introduced last year after several hundred thousand people were given residency rights in a massive "immigration amnesty" - currently says an illegal immigrant has the right to residency after five years.
But that guarantee is set to disappear too. Mr Aznar's government believes that Jean Marie Le Pen's second place in the French presidential election was the result of politicians ignoring popular worries about immigration.
Mr Diallo was not sure who Mr Le Pen was. "I have heard of him, but is he one of the leaders coming here tomorrow?" he asked.
He looked despondent when told that Spain's opposition Socialist politicians had distanced themselves from the immigrants' protest and that - even though negotiations were under way with the regional government ombudsman - they were unlikely to win work papers. "Well, I will just keep working then," he said. "Maybe things will change in the future." Meanwhile, a landmark immigration bill entered Germany's statute books yesterday, putting the issue at the centre of September's election campaign.
It will allow for a controlled inflow of workers, who will be obliged to attend integration classes.