The Aragon government has withdrawn tourist licenses from four hotels to house migrants seeking humanitarian asylum. These institutions housed them after they were contracted by several social agencies that sponsor this association. Now, the regional administration is preventing hotels from accommodating tourists because it believes they are not complying with legal requirements. The decision was taken even though the affected hotels provided their tourist clients with the usual accommodation, food and cleaning services, like other hotels that do not receive asylum seekers. “The decision relates to a political issue,” says the owner of one of these establishments, who preferred to remain anonymous, with regret.
The regional administration’s interpretation contradicts the State Secretary for Regional Policy, Arcadi Spain, who ensured that the use of hotels corresponded to the migrants’ stay, paying for the accommodation like any other client of the associations. Spain sees this measure as a relative aggravation against asylum seekers from Ukraine. “If there is no problem with the Ukrainians, there cannot be a problem whether they are from Senegal, the Sahel or elsewhere in Africa, (from) that Huin. In the end, the only difference is the color of the skin,” criticized the Foreign Minister, who emphasized that these migrants come to Spain leaving behind wars, conditions and other situations that make it impossible to live in your countries. Moreover, remember that in many sectors of the Spanish economy “there is a shortage of work.” He stressed that “we cannot allow ourselves to live in a country that has the dignity that Spain has in treating and discriminating against people based on the color of their skin.” The Secretary of State also referred to the strong migration pressure supporting the Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla, areas of political importance different from the central government, which require the solidarity of the rest of the autonomous communities.
In Aragon, the humanitarian system currently accommodates 805 migrants, according to government administration data. One of the four affected hotels, La Pardina Hotel in Sabinanejo (Huesca), which has been operating with a tourist license for 40 years, had submitted a request to restore it, which was rejected, but it was appealed in another case.