"The misery I have seen in the settlements of Almería I had only ever seen in Calcutta."

Atochares (Almería)"Hamsa, I don't see you at school." Joaqui Salord stops a young Moroccan man walking in flip-flops despite the harsh winter weather near Barranco del Búho, a filthy pit of garbage and plastic. The scene repeats itself a few minutes later, as the veteran Jesuit walks among the shacks of Don Domingo de Arriba, in Atochares, a settlement where nearly 600 people live. Kofi cleans his mud-caked clothes while listening to the radio in the background. The stains aren't even concealed by the Ghanaian veteran's meticulous brushing. The same question is posed, and Kofi, battered by poverty and emaciated from two years living among ruins, excuses himself by saying he missed the small open-air classroom the Jesuits run to teach Spanish to immigrants. Atochares is the largest settlement in the province of Almería. The lack of housing for those working in the greenhouses of the "sea of ​​plastic" has led to a proliferation of these substandard dwellings. In the Níjar Valley alone, in the Levante region of the vast "Orchard of Europe," there are almost fifty.

Atochares is a village with its own laws. A camp that has ended up being controlled by small mafias and where mostly Moroccans and Ghanaians live, but also some Gambians and Guineans. Mostly single men, although entire families have also settled there. At its peak, during the pandemic, when there were 1,400 people, there were as many as 50 minors. The ground is littered with plastic bottles, cans, and all kinds of trash. Cats scavenge among the rotting food scraps mixed with human feces. The smell is intense. The shacks rise haphazardly. In the first section, there's a certain order: long, narrow alleyways with wooden and cement shacks. There's even a bar with a television and a shop where you can find everything from bread to marijuana. The electricity is illegally tapped. Hundreds of cables run through the camp, entering and exiting the most unlikely corners of the houses. At the back, however, the structures are more rudimentary. Plastic, wood, cardboard, and sheets of metal for the roof. Chaos.

Two women haul jugs of water to their homes in wheelbarrows. After much struggle, they have managed to establish several water sources around the camp. However, the outages are constant. Just a few weeks ago, they went 10 days without water. The City Council shirked its responsibility, arguing that it was a matter for the company that provides the service. "But it's a municipal service!" exclaimed the Jesuit Migrant Service (SJM), the organization that helps the residents of Atochares: they offer Spanish classes twice a week, as well as courses in hygiene and cooking, and they help them with paperwork and address cases of violence or serious illness. They also provide them with medication and give them bicycles, phones, and scooters so they can get to work, or mattresses so they don't have to sleep on the sandy ground.

To what was formerly the farmhouse In Don Domingo, in the middle of the camp, live three Ghanaian veterans who while away the time going in and out of their house. They haven't worked for eight years. They live off the mercy of others. The day the ARA visits Atochares, they're lucky: they have food, which they use to stave off hunger in a pot with a rusty fork. One of them has diabetes. His medication has run out, and Joaqui takes note. Living in squalor in Atochares, without work, with many hours of tedium, has driven all three of them to alcoholism.

"They're under the law of survival, which has its own rules," Joaqui explains, walking among the shacks. He arrived in Atochares nine years ago, brought by the Mercedarian nuns. They were finding it increasingly difficult to help the immigrants in this camp, and this Jesuit from Menorca spearheaded the Jesuit Migrant Service (SJM). “A shantytown is the worst threat to coexistence because there is no coexistence, no relationships, people are isolated, there is no exchange, there is stigmatization; people become attached to this type of life, it robs them of their communication and relationship skills. It worsens their chances of escaping it,” explains Juan Miralles. Atochares is a “prison” that traps you, and that is “worse” even than the conditions in which most people live. Miralles gives an example of that deep well from which there comes a point where you can no longer escape. A woman spent seven months in a reintegration program run by his organization after 20 years living in a shantytown. In the end, she decided to return because she was unable to coexist with the rest of the society that had taken her in.

Something similar happened in Atochares. A young Moroccan man had been unemployed for two years. He planned to return to his country because living in Almería was becoming increasingly suffocating. The Jesuits arranged his return, but at the last minute, the man changed his mind. He wanted to stay. His son had sent him a video of his first day of school and, full of excitement, told him that when he could send money from Spain, he would buy the books he needed for class. The man kept trying, without success in finding work, and ended up leaving after a while. "If he had stayed, he was doomed to die of starvation," Joaqui laments.

Abdelkrim lived there for nine months, in a brick shack in the center of the camp. This young Moroccan, who works with the Jesuits, recounts how life in these camps is an endless loop. "From the greenhouse to the store to buy something, then back to the shack. It's a circle you can't escape," he explains, describing the difficulties in meeting even the most basic needs. During the pandemic, people asked Miralles to have his organization bring soap to those living in the camps. He laughed. "If they don't even have water, how am I supposed to bring soap?" he replied resignedly. The settlements operate according to a different logic, one that most of the population is unable to understand. "You're afraid of fires, of being robbed, you always carry everything with you. You live isolated," Abdelkrim adds.

Fires and brothels

In 2021, there were three fires in Don Domingo de Arriba. On February 13, 280 shacks burned down. Many people lost everything, even their documents. In June, a second fire left about eighty immigrants living in the highest part of the camp with nothing. And finally, in October, a third fire affected 20 families. "There are many questions and no answers," Joaqui says enigmatically about the origin of these fires. When the firefighters arrived, one of the Mercedarian nuns, Araceli, who was the heart and soul of the community, alerted a firefighter that a shack was on fire. "My hose doesn't reach," the man excused himself. "Move it," the energetic woman demanded, applying common sense. "I've been told to protect the greenhouses," the firefighter replied. Atochares is near the plastic fences where vegetables and fruit are produced for all of Europe. They are separated by only three or four meters of the Owl Ravine.

In recent years, criminal gangs have also established themselves in Atochares. They even set up three brothels in well-appointed plastic and wood structures. "One prostitute told me she was very rich because she had a house every 20 kilometers along the Costa del Sol," the Jesuit explains, trying to downplay the situation. Now there are two brothels that control a network operating from Murcia to Huelva. In the midday sun, a South American prostitute walks through the narrow streets looking for the road to the village. With the arrival of the brothels, cars from residents of the entire Níjar Valley began arriving at the camp. And with them came alcohol, drugs, and violence. Some immigrants turned to it out of desperation.

José patiently pries the spokes off a bicycle wheel, sitting on a plastic crate. He's paid 15 cents per kilogram. Poverty. He has a problem with one eye, and the Jesuits are trying to help him with the hospital bureaucracy. This Andalusian man, who ekes out a living in a dilapidated shack high above Atochares, abused his wife and stole her money. He has a restraining order against him, but they both live in Atochares. The rules here are different.

After the fires, the Níjar Town Council built small mounds of earth to prevent the migrants from rebuilding their shacks. In the lower part of town, however, the seasonal workers decided to construct shacks of cement and bricks, investing considerable effort and their hard-earned money. Some even have tiled floors. Joaqui warned them not to dedicate so many resources because the Andalusian council intends to demolish them as soon as possible. This is what happened to the El Walili settlement in January 2023. Everything was razed, and the approximately 450 people who lived there were left exposed to the elements. They created new, smaller settlements or sought shelter elsewhere. farmhouse in ruins. "In an eviction without alternatives, reality doesn't disappear. It's hypocritical," Miralles criticizes. Níjar, like El Ejido before it, dismantles these giant camps so that people go to other, smaller shelters hidden among the plastic of the greenhouses. In this way, the problem becomes invisible. Tourists going to Cabo de Gata will pass by, happy and radiant, to enjoy their idyllic vacations.

Both Miralles and the Menorcan Jesuit agree in highlighting the importance of what happened in Badalona with the B9"When Xavier Garcia Albiol evicted 400 people without offering any alternative. "The Níjar City Council has already said it will put an end to the settlements. If it has models like Badalona's, and nothing happens socially, it's dangerous," argues Joaqui.

It is estimated that there are close to 3,500 people living poorly in Níjar between farmhousesSettlements, greenhouses, and warehouses. They represent 10% of the total population of this municipality, which declined to respond to this newspaper's requests. On the other side of the sea of ​​plastic, in the western part of El Ejido, the same thing is happening. There are increasingly more tiny settlements, scattered throughout the territory, hidden among the ubiquitous greenhouses. "I accompanied a UN reporter, and he told me: 'The misery I've seen in the Almería settlements I've only ever seen in Calcutta,'" Miralles summarizes, describing the reality of this area of ​​Spain, the gateway for many immigrants seeking a better future but who end up trapped for life in a settlement.