As of June 7, 2024, for the first time in the history of Spain, the prison population of young people born abroad exceeds that of young Spaniards in prison, at a ratio of 60 to 40. If we include those born in Spain with Spanish nationality but to foreign parents, that ratio skyrockets to over 70/30. And if we distinguish by categories of crimes, we will find that most convictions for rape and sexual assault fall on foreigners, following an exponential increase in this type of crime in recent years.
Europe—and Spain—are historically accustomed to large population movements, and perhaps for this reason, they view the new wave of immigrants arriving on their shores with a certain benevolence and naivety. Past migrations occurred within the same civilization, religion, and culture, while the new migratory wave almost always and predominantly comes from Muslim countries and sub-Saharan Africa, which are very distant, if not opposed, to the liberal values, gender equality, and freedoms of the Western world. This fact is overshadowed by a benevolent perspective that grants every immigrant the right to come to Europe, to enjoy the welfare state built and paid for by Europeans over decades, and to welcome them as if they were all refugees fleeing from armed conflicts.
The conjunction of a business class interested in cheap labor, the guilt complex of a political elite, with leaders like Angela Merkel who opened European borders wide in 2015, and an anti-capitalist left that, in the absence of a proletariat to follow it, pursues a de facto alliance with political Islam, means that merely presenting data reflecting a different reality is considered a hate crime, racism, or xenophobia. The alarming current intensity of migration to Europe, along with the weak reaction that fuels the "woke" mentality entrenched in all layers and institutions, makes this wave of migration very different from previous ones and represents a true threat to the soul—and soon to the institutional body—of our Western, Judeo-Christian, and liberal civilization.
Spain as an example
In 1996, there were 542,314 foreigners registered in Spain. Most came from Northern European countries and the United Kingdom—retirees with dual residency who came to enjoy long stays or their retirement in the benefits of the Spanish climate. They represented 1.4% of the total population at that time. During the 8 years of the first conservative government of Spanish democracy, the economy experienced unprecedented growth, and Spain became an attractive destination for those wanting to work and enjoy better opportunities. Thus, by 2004, when the Socialist Party returned to power, the foreign population had multiplied sixfold, reaching just over 3 million. The conservative government encouraged this growth driven by an economic vision (more workers and more consumers should fuel more prosperity) and because during these years most immigration to Spain came from Latin America. And as was often argued back then, they shared with Spaniards the same religion, attachment to family institutions, and individual values. What was not mentioned was that the value placed on life differed substantially and that the risk of crime associated with "maras" and other criminal organizations was irresponsibly dismissed.
Since 2004, with very few exceptions linked to the deep economic crisis generated by the Socialist government of Rodríguez Zapatero (2004-2011), immigration has continued to rise. The latest census from 2022 places it at over 5.5 million (almost 12% of the total population), and estimates for 2024 range from 6.5 million to 7.5 million, depending on who is counting around 15% of the population.
What the raw numbers do not reveal is the qualitative change that is occurring: Immigration from Latin America is slowing down, immigration from the European Union is plummeting, while immigration from Africa is rocketing up. In 2022, the largest minority of immigrants in Spain came from Morocco, with nearly one million people. Today, that number could already be at 1.2 million, despite the strong push for naturalizations granted by the current socialist-communist government, which tends to favor Moroccans (30% of the total in 2021).
Even worse, the economic argument that justified previously unseen levels of immigration—now supplemented by the need for young workers to support an aging population and our pension system—remains a fallacy when it is confirmed that most of these new immigrants do not contribute anything to state coffers but rather consume public resources. Thus, according to data from the Social Security Ministry at the end of 2023, only 35% of Moroccans settled in Spain were contributing to social security; the same was true for Nigerians; and barely 25% for Algerians.
The only independent study that analyzed the costs and benefits of immigration in Spain was conducted by the Strategic Studies Group (GEES) in 2018[1], and although raw data may have changed, I do not believe its conclusions have been altered at all: The only foreign community in Spain with a higher employment rate than nationals is the Chinese community. The unemployment rate for those originating from North Africa triples or quadruples that of Spaniards, depending on the specific nationality.
In terms of direct costs, it is important to remember that due to the quasi-federal system of the Spanish state and the lack of communication between local institutions, autonomous communities, and state authorities, it is practically impossible to know how much public money is spent on the aid and social benefits offered for free to illegal immigrants. We do know, for example, that the Community of Madrid allocates about 6,000 euros a month to take care of each unaccompanied minor (around 15,000 in reception centers). However, what we do not know is the number of benefits that the rest of the immigrant population accumulates. Only in scandalous cases do we gain access to information; for instance, in 2014 it was revealed that Redouan Bensbih, a Moroccan enrolled in an Al-Qaeda franchise in Syria who died that year, received nearly 1,000 euros a month in integration aid from social services in the Basque Country for five years. In 2017, another jihadist, Said Lachhab, was arrested while receiving social benefits worth 1,800 euros. Another example: the first hundred names on the list of 300 housing aids granted by the Community of Madrid (under conservative governance) are all North Africans. Some claim that the direct cost of illegal immigration in Spain amounts to ten times the defense budget—80 billion euros a year. This is something to consider when discussing the economic benefits of immigration.
But there is another social factor that must be kept very much in mind: crime associated with immigration. The subject is anathema for the left and a toxic topic for conventional right-wing parties that do not want to be labeled as xenophobic. But the data speaks for itself: according to figures from the National Institute of Statistics and those provided by the Supreme Council of Justice, in 2022 convictions of foreigners in Spain accounted for 26% of the total. By 2023, this figure exceeded 31%. This means that the immigrant population in Spain commits three times more crimes than native Spaniards. This issue worsens when we talk about sexual offenses, where foreigners commit crimes four times more often than Spaniards (seven times more when it comes to rapes)[2].
However, the most serious problems are not just the disparity in propensity to commit crimes between foreigners and nationals but also—as we are seeing these days with stark clarity in the United Kingdom—the double standard employed by police and judicial systems when dealing with immigrants. It is not only about different sentences being handed down for the same crime based on race, religion, or nationality; it also involves discriminatory police treatment against Catholics and Christians compared to Muslims, against whites compared to immigrants of color, and against nationals compared to foreigners—regardless of whether they are legal or illegal.
European media, in turn, respond to directives not to publish either the faces or the nationalities of criminals if they are immigrants or Muslims in order to avoid an increase in racism, it is said. However, they do not hesitate to highlight data when native Europeans are the ones committing crimes. The issue of gender-based violence is paradigmatic in this regard.
In Spain, when immigration involves believers—mostly evangelical Christians from Latin America—faith is practiced within the usual separation between Church and State. However, when Muslim minorities reach a certain threshold, they attempt to impose their customs regardless of the social friction this generates. This includes prayers blocking streets; demands for the removal of certain foods in schools and prisons; acceptance of being governed by Sharia law; and the imposition of animal sacrifices that should scandalize animal rights activists. But it does not stop there. As we have observed and suffered in major capitals around the world (with no American exception), tolerance towards the Muslim Brotherhood and political maneuvering by Hamas and its supporters have made the streets dangerous for Jews and for any decent European who aspires to continue living freely as before. Not to mention the illegitimate pressures on parliamentarians and government members.
The infamous Arab or Muslim Street has moved from the Middle East to the West with the acquiescence of timid conservatives and the complacency of a childish and nihilistic left. The local elections in 2024 in the United Kingdom show the future of Europe and the emergence of Muslim religious parties that aim to gradually take power from the bottom up.
The Suicide of Europe (and Spain)
Within Spain, there is a special place, Catalonia, that reveals how far the stupidity of current political and business leaders can go. Immersed in an ideology that seeks independence from the rest of Spain, their social policies have been oriented towards attracting immigrants who are not Spanish-speaking, prioritizing Pakistanis and Africans over Latin Americans. It was supposed that this would allow them to advance more quickly with their linguistic cleansing of Spanish. The result has been a disproportionate increase in Muslim communities and the highest rates of jihadism and crime among foreigners compared to the rest of Spain. It is in Catalonia where foreign convicts exceed Spaniards in all age categories. Today, Barcelona resembles Marseille and Tangier more than Copenhagen or Milan.
As British essayist Douglas Murray warned in his prescient book The Strange Death of Europe[3], it is the current weakness of Europe—the rejection of everything European by a significant part of the ruling class and the entire left, the social condemnation of practicing Christianity, and the ideological disarmament against Islamism—that makes this new wave of immigration so dangerous. One does not need to believe in the great replacement theory to see the disparity in birth rates between European women and those from Muslim countries. In Spain, for example, Spanish women have a fertility rate of 1.1 children per woman, while Moroccan women have 3.4. In other words, the growth of the Spanish population is due to the birth of babies to foreign parents, while the actual native population is decreasing. And continuing with the case of Catalonia, there are municipalities like Salt (in Girona), where births to foreign parents reach 75.7%.
Another point to consider: in Spain in 1970, not so long ago, more than 90% of the population identified as Catholic, with more than half also considering themselves practicing Catholics. By 2022, those figures had fallen to 37.2% and a meager 18%, respectively. By 2024, Spain will cease to be predominantly Catholic. Only evangelical Christians and Muslims are growing, but not so much due to conversions as driven by migration flows. Not far off, there will be more faithful on Fridays in mosques than Catholics at Mass on Sundays.
A population that has fundamentally turned its back on its faith cannot understand the religious motivations of others—much less those of Islam. This partly explains the difficulty in accepting the true challenge and risks posed to us Westerners—Europeans and Spaniards—by an open borders policy and uncontrolled immigration. But without that understanding, there is no strength or motivation that can save us.
Rafael L. Bardají served as National Security Advisor to the Spanish Prime Minister José Maria Aznar (1996-2004), director of the Net Assessment Office at the Spanish Ministry of Defense (2012), and CEO of World Wide Strategy, a consulting firm since 2013.
[1] GEES: El coste de la inmigración extranjera en España . Madrid, GEES 2018
[2] Ministerio del Interior: Informe general 2022 . Gobierno de España 2022
[3] Murray, Douglas. The Strange Death of Europe. Bloomsbury Continuum; Updated edition (June 2018.
