Badalona begins in Senegal
"I used to be a ship's captain, now I'm a truck driver." This statement The video of Isa, one of the occupants of the B9 high school in Badalona, on TV3, has gone largely unnoticed amidst the media frenzy following the eviction of 400 people from this Catalan city. The reactions on social media to Isa's video are the usual ones: some argue that we can't possibly address all the world's misery; others, that we need to have compassion and sensitivity towards the vulnerable. Ironically, the progressive position reinforces the far-right narrative: when faced with the proposal to be charitable hosts, more and more people are responding—with increasing vehemence—that they won't. Both positions tend to ignore the root causes of migration. Isa, a former Senegalese fisherman, is the clearest example of a problem that has accelerated on the coasts of West Africa over the last ten years: the processing of fish into fishmeal for export, from which we benefit—and consume.
The half Much of the fish consumed worldwide is no longer caught but raised in fish farms. This shift has made it possible to maintain fish consumption in wealthy countries and increase consumption in China; however, fishmeal is needed to feed farmed fish. Over the past fifteen years, Chinese companies have installed dozens of factories on the coasts of countries like Senegal and Gambia to process local fish into fishmeal. Four kilos of fish are needed to produce one kilogram of fishmeal, so the establishment of these factories has directly impacted local markets: there is less and less fish available, and what remains is more expensive. In Brikama, Gambia, the price of bonga—the fish destined for the poorest segments of the population—has increased fivefold in a decade.
The second point of contention was fishing agreements. Both Senegal and Gambia have had agreements with the EU since 2014 that particularly benefit Spanish vessels. This situation, coupled with the presence of Chinese and South Korean fishing fleets in the region, has sparked protests from African fishermen, and their governments have few resources to prevent it. Burdened with debt and needing dollars, more and more African countries are turning their fishing industry into a source of foreign currency: that's why they sign agreements with the EU or attract processing plants. This November, the price The international price of fishmeal was $1.62 per kilogram. With such a low price, the only way to increase profits is to increase exports; this benefits importing countries, which then have a regular supply at affordable prices.
Food for the pigs
In southern Europe, fishmeal is used in fish farms and also for animal feed. pigsTo put it simply: the butterfly effect of the global economy removes fish from African plates to feed Catalan pigs. In a twist of fate, some of these Africans will encounter the pigs when they work in the slaughterhouses of the Vic plain. This is why the crisis in Badalona begins in Senegal, and it's a situation that transcends the municipal level. The current global order attempts to reconcile two concepts: on the one hand, that African goods circulate freely to wealthy countries; on the other, that the people affected by the loss of these goods remain isolated. This is why much of the Western world finds itself trapped in the same contradiction as Mayor Albiol: we need Africans—and their resources—close enough to exploit them, but we want them far enough away to be protected. And Africans are not willing to disappear.
