The Government denies Ayuso: “There is no investigation into sexual assault linked to migrants in Alcalá”

Francisco Martín, delegate of the Government of Spain in the Community of Madrid, denied this Wednesday that complaints of sexual assault linked to the 1,200 migrants sheltered in a barracks in Alcalá de Henares had been registered, as the president of the region had said hours before. , Isabel Díaz Ayuso. “At this time, there is no open investigation,” said the representative of the Executive led by Pedro Sánchez, the target of all the criticism launched during the day by the conservative leader and the mayor of the town, Judith Piquet (PP). Before the delegate's intervention, the regional government, when asked by this newspaper, did not provide any data to support the president's statement, and only the far-right party Vox supported it.

Everything starts at 1:00 p.m. this Wednesday in the plenary hall of the Alcalá de Henares City Council (180,000 inhabitants), where Díaz Ayuso and his councilors travel to hold an extraordinary government council. When the time for the press conference arrives, an almost unprecedented format is chosen. Díaz Ayuso will intervene first with the mayor. Then, the Government spokesperson and the Minister of Culture, who will report on what was discussed at the government meeting. The reason? That Díaz Ayuso only wants to talk about the presence of migrants in the town, where they began arriving from the Canary Islands in November. It is the new vein for its strategy of constant clashes with the central Administration. And Díaz Ayuso goes all out: he assures that the presence of migrants in the Reception, Emergency and Referral Center (CAED), located in the Primo de Rivera barracks, has caused brawls, cases of scabies and complaints of sexual assaults that he is investigating police.

“Several serious brawls have already occurred in the reception center, including some involving people who have already been detained by the National Police; sexual assaults on women in the municipality are being investigated, as reported; fights break out inside and outside the center; there has been an outbreak of scabies [que ha afectado a ocho migrantes]…”, says Díaz Ayuso during an intervention focused exclusively on that matter. “We are facing a situation that is beginning to be unsustainable,” he states emphatically about the 1,200 emigrants transferred to the town. “We have to denounce what is happening in Alcalá, which is also reproduced in other municipalities,” he adds. “We are living in real chaos.”

For hours, no one provides data to confirm or deny the claim that there have been complaints of sexual assault linked to migrants. When consulted by this newspaper, the president's team reaffirms the existence of these complaints of sexual assault, but does not specify anything else: neither how many there are, nor since when they have existed, or how the regional administration knows that they affect migrants arriving from the Canary Islands. .

“It is under investigation, we cannot offer information about it,” says a government spokesperson, despite the fact that the president had, precisely, put the issue on the table without anyone asking her about it.

Neither the National Police nor the Government delegation speak out. Only one source familiar with police work clearly questions the regional president's version: “There is no complaint. Zero”. And then yes, late this Wednesday afternoon, the Government delegate, who has the coordination powers of the National Police in the region, intervenes in a press conference.

“It is extremely serious to mix migration with insecurity,” says Martín when asked by journalists. “It has nothing to do with reality, neither objective nor subjective,” he adds. “These messages are harmful, they create alarm and go against coexistence. Of course, I condemn any type of assessment in that sense, because of course it is not accredited by the data either,” he says about Díaz Ayuso, without mentioning her. And he emphasizes: “In relation to sexual assaults, at this time, in Alcalá de Henares, there is no open investigation for sexual assault linked to a possible origin in the migrants in the Primo de Rivera barracks.”

In the heat of that statement, Juan Lobato, leader of the PSOE in Madrid, reproaches the regional president for having launched, he says, “a vulgar lie and an absolute invention.” And a spokesperson for the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration adds that the situation at the center is “one of calm and coexistence.”

But by then the statements of Díaz Ayuso, who demands that Sánchez call a conference of presidents, have been published for hours. Also those of Mayor Piquet, a rising value in the PP, which has made her president of the Madrid Federation of Municipalities.

“The good name and the best image of Alcalá has suffered an unfair loss due to incidents caused by the lack of foresight, insensitivity and incompetence of the central government,” says the councilor, who reaffirms the existence of the complaints even after that the delegate denies them. “We are all aware of what has happened these days in the city, it is not the image that we want to convey of the city, and that is why we have to continue denouncing it,” she added. “That is why it comforts us and encourages us to move forward, to feel the support of the regional government of Isabel Díaz Ayuso.”

The interventions of the two PP politicians soon garnered the support of Rocío Monasterio, Vox's spokesperson in the region, who intoned a speech indistinguishable from that of Díaz Ayuso. “Of course Vox was right,” says the Madrid leader of the far-right party, which has proposed closing the reception centers for minors, signing agreements with the countries of origin for their repatriation and activating the Territorial Plan for Civil Protection of the Community from Madrid. “And those who suffer from it are the neighbors,” she continues, paraphrasing Díaz Ayuso. “We have to give a very clear message that we do not want to have illegal immigration, that we want to repatriate all those who are spreading terror, as Mrs. Ayuso has said, in Alcalá de Henares, where they are investigating alleged sexual assaults, they have a scabies outbreak, and there is chaos.”

The chaos to which the two policies have referred has a common point. Last weekend, the Police arrested three people after a brawl between Moroccan and sub-Saharan migrants in the Tirolina park, in Alcalá de Henares, according to police sources told EFE. Six men were injured in the fight, which occurred on Friday night and in which sticks and iron bars were used, including a sub-Saharan man who suffered a severe blow to the head and had to be intubated due to concussion, and another with cuts on his face from a broken bottle. The serious man was transferred to the Príncipe de Asturias hospital in Alcalá de Henares, in very serious condition.

According to police sources, those involved in the fight, who are pending identification, reside in the CAED of Alcalá de Henares, where immigrants from the Canary Islands are housed.

The Alcalá de Henares Emergency, Reception and Referral Center became operational in November at the Primo de Rivera Barracks in Alcalá de Henares (Madrid), when it received the first 264 migrants to be housed there. Its maximum capacity is 1,134 seats, according to the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security, and Migration. This device is joined by those open at the Naval Hospital of Cartagena and the General Arteaga Barracks in Madrid, or the one available in a shelter provided by the Mérida City Council.

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