Then, as now, the movement was not only continuous but diverse. One report from 1992 documented that of 1,547 illegal migrants detained by the Spanish authorities in Tarifa alone over a ten-month period, there were 258 Ethiopians, 193 Liberians and 64 Somalis. As the report observed, ‘word of the new route had spread far beyond Morocco, with not only Algerians and growing numbers of sub-Saharan Africans, but also Filipinos, Chinese and even the occasional Eastern Europeans among those detained’. Among those who were fleeing, some were escaping oppression while others were simply looking for work or a better quality of life. As Santiago Varela, Spain’s then Deputy Interior Minister, said, ‘In North Africa, there is a structural problem. We don’t know how its political and economic situation will develop. And the demographic pressure is enormous.’ He was referring to a situation in which even then 70 per cent of the Moroccan population was under the age of 30 and official unemployment figures sat at 17.5 per cent. ‘You can’t yet compare our problem with that of other European countries,’ Varela said. ‘But it’s a warning of what can happen here in the future. Spain has passed very quickly from being a land of emigration to one of immigration.’2

Varela was speaking after a period in which North Africans who had previously headed towards France and Belgium were instead looking to find jobs in Italy and Spain at a time when neither country required visas. The migrants could enter either country as tourists and then travel on to the rest of Europe. And part of the pull factor even then was Europe’s commitment to lower the internal borders between countries, making free movement easy once anyone was in Europe. In the 1990s efforts to clamp down on illegal entries were hampered by Morocco’s refusal to take back any non-Moroccans who had left the country. Thus, as one Spanish official noted, even if the government did manage to deter boats in his region, ‘They’ll find other ways of getting in. They’ll use bigger boats and land away from here. They’ll try Italy or Portugal. While there’s so much misery over there, they’ll keep coming.’3