The altercations at the Embassy of Gambia in Spain continue to generate consequences. The information broke yesterday, when some media outlets claimed that a group of people had jumped the walls of this country's diplomatic delegation in Madrid as a consequence of the request for a document that supports the vulnerability of the applicants.
According to what Demócrata has been able to consult from sources in the National Police and also from the Jupol union, embassies are not authorized to process vulnerability certificates, one of the requirements demanded by the Government for immigrants to obtain recognition of regularization in our country.
It is up to NGOs to carry out this task: to issue a certificate that, according to these sources, is extremely easy to obtain.
120 euros and days on the street sleeping
But the cause of the altercation and the attempted assault on the fence does not respond to the request for the vulnerability certificate, but rather to the demand by the Gambian embassy to charge 120 euros to all those people who needed a passport, lacking one. To collect these passports —police sources consulted maintain— they were assigned an appointment. This caused Gambian citizens to travel from different points in Spain to Madrid, where the only embassy headquarters is located.
As a consequence, this group of people had been there for two and even three days sleeping on the street, waiting to receive a document that was not arriving. The delay and exhaustion were the trigger for the assault on the fence, as the images show. But the problem —these sources insist— was neither the vulnerability certificate nor the accreditation of lacking a criminal record. The problem was the passport, since most of these people did not have it.
The key to time and criminal records
For the police union Jupol, with which Demócrata has been able to speak, the problem does not lie in the vulnerability certificate in this specific case, but in the "chaos" generated by the Government's lack of planning in the regularization process.
“All the burden has been placed on public companies that are not specialized and that, no matter how much good will they have, will not be able to manage the process correctly,” they point out. Among other reasons, because they lack sufficient means to check key aspects such as criminal records.
This point —they emphasize— is especially sensitive. From the moment a person commits a crime until there is a final judgment, a long period of time can pass. During that interval, even though the crime has been committed, that person appears as if they had no criminal record.
The same —they add— could happen with people in preventive detention, who could avail themselves of regularization without there being a definitive judicial resolution on their records yet. A process that can drag on for years, as has happened in well-known cases such as the Kitchen Case or the Pujol Case.
If you want, I can give you an even more incisive version (like a report opening) or adapt headlines and subheadings with that same premium tone.