Aragon declares itself rebellious in accepting unaccompanied foreign minors
The Spanish government is giving communities more days to provide details on how many of these children they care for.
BarcelonaThe Spanish government is giving itself more days for the autonomous communities to refine the data they have submitted on the available places for migrant minors without family members. The deadline for the regional governments to submit their data for redistribution of the 6,000 children currently in overcrowded centers in the Canary Islands, Ceuta, and Melilla passed at midnight this evening. They must be relocated throughout the Peninsula based, for example, on each territory's prior reception efforts. Only Aragon has refused to provide its data, while the Community of Madrid has provided the central government with the total number of minors cared for by the system during the past year, instead of providing the data that would provide a snapshot of the current situation. According to the agreement between Junts and the PSOE, Catalonia will have to take in between 20 and 30 of these minors. Because it is one of the regions that serves the most, specifically 2,242, according to the data that the Ministry of Social Rights has submitted to the ministry.
The Minister of Youth and Children, Sira Rego, lamented that it is not possible to decide on the relocation of children waiting in the Canary Islands and African places because the regions have responded with data that follow various criteria, making it difficult to obtain a true picture of the need for places. The minister attributed the behavior of Aragon and the Community of Madrid, both governed by the Popular Party, to "a political intention based on racist motives."
Without the data, Rego has given the regions more days to "size the places" in the foster care system. In this sense, the deadline may be extended by only one week, because the validation of the royal decree for the care of unaccompanied foreign minors is scheduled for Thursday the 10th. Before that, however, the text will need to be discussed in a meeting between the ministries involved (Inclusion, Youth, Interior, and Territorial Policy).
In its offensive against the reception of migrant minors, the Aragon government has filed an administrative appeal against the request from the Ministry of Youth and Children to provide data on places and occupancy in juvenile centers. It also requests the precautionary suspension of the State's request for information on minors.
