In Spain, 39 stranded Palestinian refugees seeks asylum at Barcelona airport

In a key development, authorities in Spain have informed that a group of 39 Palestinian refugees have sought asylum in the country after they refused to board the plane at Barcelona airport where they had a stopover on their flight from Cairo. The spokesman with Spain’s Interior Ministry told The Associated Press that the police department was investigating the charter flight that allowed the group to fly into Spain’s second-largest city on Monday. As per the report, the refugees left the airport and later refused to board the plane to continue their trip at the Barcelona stopover.

As per AP, the flight’s final destination was Quito with stops in Barcelona and Bogota, in Columbia. The spokeswoman with the Spanish government’s delegation in Catalonia on the condition of anonymity told The Associated Press that after the flight arrived at El Prat airport on Monday, the group of 39 Palestinians deboarded the plane and later they refused to get back on the plane. The spokeswoman further said that the group of people stayed at police facilities in the airport for five days and they were given food and assistance. 

Palestinians seek asylum in Spain 

Furthermore, the spokeswoman stated that on Friday, 29 of them had been permitted to enter Spain and they were taken care of by social services, according to AP. However, the asylum requests of the 10 people were still being processed. Spain’s Interior Ministry which supervised the asylum applications in Spain and custom checkpoints at the airport informed that the applications of the refugees were being analysed and the process of document examination could take days, weeks or even months. 

Sophie Muller, the representative in Spain for the United Nations refugee agency(UNHCR) pointed out that the people were carrying refugee documents issued by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees in the near east. As per the AP report, the UN agency helps Palestinian refugees with essential services. Sophie Muller further stated that many people in the group had previously sought asylum in Egypt and Ethiopia. As per the news agency, Spain authorities have received around 50,000 asylum requests in the first 10 months 2021 and these requests were mostly from Venezuelans, Colombians and Moroccans.

Inputs from AP

Image: AP