Vox’s insistence on imposing its red lines for the Murcia region in exchange for giving the green light to the budgets is giving results. One of its historical demands, the closure of the center for children not accompanied by the Murcian district of Santa Cruz, seems to have had an effect. This in particular is one of the points they have been claiming again and again every time they have the pan for the handle for six years, the same ones that have open these reception facilities.
The community has been dragging last year for four months due to the impossibility of agreeing with Vox. The negotiation was truncated last March because the leader of the extreme right, Santiago Abascal, demanded in his social networks the suspension of the Moroccan Arab and culture language program. It is a state project on which the community does not have any competencies.
And now, the closing of Rosa Peñas is another of the conditions that the extreme right -wing party has put on the table: “If you are really against illegal immigration, the center of Menas de Santa Cruz must be closed,” the Vox leader reiterated in the community in the community, José Ángel Antelo.
This April 9, the regional government has surprised the possibility of closing the center of Santa Cruz. The Minister of Social Policy, Families and Equality, Conchita Ruiz Caballero, has argued that the building “has no place in the residential reception and foster care model, which is none other than Europe, UNICEF and the Government of Spain.”
“It is a request that is repeated again and again in the Vox argument,” reflects aloud the coordinator of one of the households and union representative of the Company Committee, Alfonso Morillas, who says the news caught them totally by surprise. “The counselor released the bomb and left us out of play.” You always have to look for the improvement, he says, “but the pink model Peñas is the one that is established by almost the entire region, both in the centers that our foundation manages and in other entities.”
The center opened in 2019, welcoming 24 migrants. According to the Ministry of Social Policy, Families and Equality, the center currently serves a total of 60 minors. The counselor has assured that she raises this closure because the facilities were designed for a “temporary” reception, but the closure of this center has been a constant demand for the ultra -right.
It is not the first time that Vox conditions an agreement with the popular at the close of this center. It was in other budgets, those of 2020, when those of Abascal requested that the regional government commit to the closure of the Santa Cruz facilities. During these dates, the Minister of Social Affairs and Vice President of the Government of Murcia, Isabel Franco (Citizens), defined this newspaper El Rosa Peñas as a “modelic” center with capacity for 72 minors: “The agreement will be fulfilled but when there is another center like the one we have now; we will not allow children to go back in rights,” he said then.
The closure never took place. In 2022, Franco extended the social concert with the Antonio Moreno Foundation to finance the squares of several protection centers, including Rosa Peñas, until 2025. The agreement expires this September.
In the Region of Murcia, the total number of unaccompanied migrant minors that the community has in reception amounts to the 619 children. According to the Minister of Social Policy, Families and Equality, Conchita Ruiz, during the year 2024 a total of 741 children were attended. According to figures provided by his department, “we have the occupation to 220 percent.”
With the approval of the reform of the foreigner law this summer will begin with the distribution of more than 4,000 children and young people from the Canary Islands and Ceuta to the rest of the autonomous communities.
One more uprooting
Spaniards, Algerians, Moroccans, Gambians or Senegalese. There are 60 boys and girls between 10 and 12 who live in the center: “Some have been here for four years, they have their friends, go to school or the institute, to extracurricular ones in the afternoon and have friends and community roots,” says Alfonso Morillas, who emphasizes that they are children – space or foreigners – who have already suffered one or more uprooting in their life “and now they will have to face a similar process.”
These budgets, “will be the budgets of shame, for closing a center simply by the requirement of Vox.” The coordinator of one of the Rosa Peñas modules insists that “never” had previously transferred the intention of closing the facilities: “At Christmas the general director was here, in the Ministry they have always spoken very well about the center and our work.”
That is another “great concern”: what will be the fate of the 80 employees who serve in the center. “They have not informed us of anything, they have not given us any deadline; only the announcement of the counselor before the Easter holidays and we do not know if they will transfer us to another place or simply, we will be without work.” Asked about this newspaper, sources from the Ministry of Social Policy have ruled out expanding information about the possible closure of the Children’s Center.
“We are not Amazon, who carry boxes, we work with people and that entails a big emotional wear, because we take care of boys and girls with their backpack, which many times share with us,” says Morillas.
A second family
“The center workers and the boys with whom we share home are a second family, it is like a second house,” he says on the other side of the Abdeljalil phone, Algerian in the coastal city of Mostaganem, northwest of the country. It’s five o’clock on Thursday and has just left a bar in a neighborhood of the Murcian capital. At 21, he has been in Spain for five, since he decided to cross from Algeria to Spain in Patera: “I succeeded at the third attempt, with seven other people, and we arrived at Cartagena, where our Civil Guard rescued us and the Red Cross attended us.”
The Pink Peñas Center arrived in 2019. “When I entered I was new, new.” Two years passed, from 16 to 18. “In each home up to 24 people and three in each room, the atmosphere was very familiar and the people who work there are greatly involved with the boys; in general we have all much love.”
Abdeljalil advocates maintaining the center in motion: “There are boys who are already living there, making their normal life, like any other person; thanks to my passage through Santa Cruz now I have two formations, of a chef and waiter because I always liked the hospitality industry, a rent and an opportunity to help my family every month and get ahead.” His apartment currently “is one of the boys I met in the center of Santa Cruz, who also works with me, we have taken a whole tour together.”
Neighborhood controversy
The controversy was fed by Vox’s supporters and politicians from the first day, which came to organize protests under the motto ‘Stop Centers of Menas’. “It is true that when the center opened there was some controversy, but we have always been very transparent and none of our boys or girls have had any relationship with crime or violent episodes,” says Morillas. “Never, they have never been able to blame a negative behavior in the community in Santa Cruz or the surrounding villages; we know that there are neighbors against, but the treatment has always been cordial and friendly.”
The one hundred percent of the minors “is in school resources, in schools, institutes, professional training, preparation courses for the world of work; they are going to play football, painting, some are part of the scouts, and break with all that suddenly is strong,” says Morillas, who warns that “the boys also begin to ask, because they feel this place as their home.”
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