First night without "hunting in the Maghrebi" in Torre Pacheco

Torre Pacheco (Murcia)Dozens of Civil Guard vehicles lined up with their lights flashing. At the other end of the town, more and more Civil Guard vehicles were moving through the streets of Torre Pacheco to prevent a group of about sixty young people of North African origin from advancing. It was a game of cat and mouse for much of the night. The kids, their faces hidden, threw firecrackers and demanded justice for their children. the attack on a Moroccan restaurant on Sunday, moving through the streets of the Murcian town, and the police stopped their march to keep them under control. If the boys changed direction, riot police were waiting for them up ahead.

The heavy police presence this morning, with checkpoints at all entrances to the town, served to secure Torre Pacheco, especially the San Antonio neighborhood where the Maghreb community lives, and prevented the fourth consecutive night of disturbances, at least until this edition went to press at 2:00 a.m. There was a lot of shouting, a lot of firecrackers, but no confrontations. This was what the leaders of the various Islamic communities in Torre Pacheco had asked the youth—mostly minors—hours earlier. At 10:30 p.m., they had met with them to try to calm things down and not further fuel the conflict. However, when the religious leaders marched home, the angry shouts of the youth, clamoring for revenge, began. And immediately after, already at night, the harmless game of cat and rat began: kilometers and kilometers up and down the streets of a municipality that had been overwhelmed for three days by the clashes between young people of Moroccan origin and people linked to the far right—stirred up by parties like Vox—who had arrived from local areas.

The last night was one of tense calm due to the non-appearance of the far-right groups, who did not come to Torre Pacheco, although they have already issued a call to hunt down young North Africans for July 15, 16, and 17. Today, Tuesday, in fact, the arrival of members of Desokupa, led by their leader Daniel Esteve, is already expected. The spark that ignited this conflict was the attack on a 68-year-old man by a young North African from outside the municipality. He was arrested yesterday in Errenteria (Guipúzcoa) as he was about to board a train to Irún with the intention of leaving for France.

"Don't be like them"

Despite it being a working Monday, many businesses in Torre Pacheco were closed. People feared the worst after a busy weekend. Like Jessica, who at seven in the evening was handing out leaflets to a group of Moroccan citizens having tea at the Istanbul café, just a few meters from the Civil Guard's security system to block San Antonio. "Go home at night, don't be like them," Jessica pleaded with them. "I've never been stopped on the street before, and these days they've asked for my ID four or five times a day," said Ayoub, who couldn't go to work yesterday, while reading the leaflet.

The tension was palpable throughout the San Antonio neighborhood. Broken glass littered the ground from the recent nights' fights, smashed cars, and suspicious glances. A distrust that has only recently emerged. Everyone agreed that Spanish citizens and those originally from Morocco had always lived together peacefully. Pedro and Mohamed exemplified this with hugs and laughter. "If they don't want me here, I'll sell the house and leave," announces the gardener, who has been in Spain for 23 years. "What are you saying?" his neighbor snaps. Mohamed points to Vox and hate speech toward immigrants as the trigger for what's happening. "Young people from the same town don't fight; they're all from outside," Pedro points out.

While a drone monitored the neighborhood from above, people were approaching the police control zone. Dozens of curious onlookers poked their heads out as night fell. For others, however, it was curfew. For Abdoul's two daughters, ages eleven and seven, it was time to lock themselves in the house: upstairs because they didn't trust themselves outside. These days, there are no parks or excursions; at most, they can go out to the threshing floor of the house for a while in daylight. In fact, the family parks their cars far away, outside the neighborhood, for fear of being broken into. "It's like a war, I'm scared," Abdoul admits. He feels singled out even though he has always had a good relationship with the locals. "I bought a house here. Do I have to sell it and go back to Morocco?" he wonders.

He is clear that what is happening in Torre Pacheco is a "spark," something isolated, that the far right has exploited to fuel racism, but that, in reality, this "is not about nationality, but about youth." This is an idea with which all the neighbors with whom ARA has spoken agree. The problem has nothing to do with people's origins. The neighbors point out that, on the one hand, there is a group of young people "from here and there who have no respect for anyone," as Mohamed points out, and, at the same time, the hate speech of some neo-Nazi groups and organizations has led people from other municipalities to seek trouble in the town. "We are also looking for the three boys" (referring to the perpetrators of the attack), announced another neighbor, of Moroccan roots but born in Spain, before learning that the police had already done their work.

Necessary Workers

In one of the squares in the center of San Antonio, a group of neighbors were enjoying the fresh air before dinner. "When it gets dark, we'll have to get under the bed," announces Manoli, who believes that living with the neighbors from the Maghreb is very good, as they bring her "melons and potatoes" from the countryside, and all they want is to work. "They have the right to work," notes Juana, a fellow chatterbox until dark. "If it weren't for them, for the citizens of Morocco, there would be no countryside. We don't want to work anymore," adds Javi. While the conversation in the square is going on, a couple of workers of Moroccan origin stop to chat amicably with the group. A few meters away, about twenty young people, with masks covering their faces, begin to gather. "These, these," says Juana.

Over the past few days, police checkpoints have identified around eighty people, most of them trying to reach the Murcia town with baseball bats or knives. Ten people have also been arrested so far, including the alleged perpetrator of the attack and the two young men who were with him when the attack took place and did nothing to stop it. None of them were residents of the town. The rest (six Spaniards and one Moroccan) were arrested for disturbing the peace.

The mayor of Torre Pacheco, Pedro Ángel Roca (PP), in an early morning interview with ARA, called for a halt to the movement of citizens from nearby towns, because they are not the ones responsible for ending "the crime" in the town. "I ask the people who are being encouraged to come and solve the problem not to come, that we will solve it with the State security forces, and that they leave us alone because what the people of the town want is not to have fear or the uncertainty of whether night will come and we will have altercations," Rod explained.

This Monday, the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) in Murcia and Podemos decided to file a complaint seeking justice following the messages from José Ángel Antelo, leader of Vox in Murcia, and the xenophobic attacks of the past four days. Furthermore, Ione Belarra's party also announced that it will take the leader of the far-right party, Santiago Abascal, to the Prosecutor's Office for inciting hatred against immigrants.