It’s Saturday, it’s seven in the afternoon in Alcalá de Henares, and there is a tense calm in the Plaza de Cervantes, the most busy in the historic center. The atmosphere is familiar: there are parents walking with their children, a group of young people eating an ice cream sitting in one bank and a larger of children playing football with a red rubber ball. However, the news of June 28, when the allegedly met by a 21 -year -old Mali, a resident of the town’s reception, emergency and derivation center (CAED) of the town, is on everyone’s mouth. The tension was expressed this last week with two days of disturbances in the Madrid municipality, in which members of violent ultra -right groups such as and national democracy have been seen. Both protests were dissolved by the National Police with bowls and deterrent and left a balance of five detainees and an injured agent, according to sources from the Government Delegation.
The social agitation that has caused the event has also reached political life. The mayor of Alcalá de Henares, Judith Piquet (PP), has demanded from the Government of Spain the immediate closure of the Immigrant Center. “Alcalá has been supportive, but everything has a limit,” he has tweeted. At the same time that he maintained a cross of accusations with the delegate of the Government of Madrid, Francisco Martín, who was shown both against sexual violence and racism and denounced the painted – “blacks to the cemetery”, next to a swastika – which appeared on the walls of the center after the manifestation not authorized last Friday to its doors.
Even Alcalá de Henares has moved this Sunday the leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal, who has summoned the media against the doors of Caed to demand the cessation of what he calls “insecurity associated with illegal immigration.” He has caused another concentration, peaceful this time, in which shouts have been heard like “Pedro Sánchez to the wall!” either “”.
The Alcalareños manifest divided opinions. There are those who are afraid of the migrants who sleep in the center, and those who have it of the ultras groups that move there. Pilar García (31 years old) is a neighbor of the municipality “of a lifetime” who believes that what is happening is that “Abascal puts fear with demagogy.” “In my neighborhood I have seen the same crime of blacks as of Spaniards,” he adds. For other people, such as Leyre Pérez, 21, the people are not insecure, but they say that after what has happened he “enters the body” when approaching the area of the center. Leyre is accompanied by her friend María Álvarez, 20, who is clear that the reaction of those who have protested in front of the place “is justified.” “People who sleep there are not contributing what they expected to contribute,” he says.
The CAED of Alcalá de Henares opened in 2023 and is designed to meet “the basic needs of immigrant people in a situation of vulnerability due to physical deterioration and the lack of social, family and economic media that reach the Spanish coasts”, as stated on the website of the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and migrations. It is in the field of the Primo de Rivera military quartering. There are approximately 1,700 people within large tents, with beds ordered by the NIE (number of identification of foreigners) of each person.
Although many, including Santiago Abascal, have referred to the residents of the center as “Menas” – an acronym of unaccompanied migrant minors – such centers are designed exclusively for immigrants of legal age. For newcomers to the country to have a place of stay. In theory, it cannot go from three months before another resource is derived, but in practice it sometimes lengthens up to nine, according to sources linked to the center.
That is something that Blanca Aller has been able to verify because it is voluntary in, a group that was created following the inauguration of the center to teach Spanish to the people who live there, give them legal advice and make excursions with them. He explains that all the people he has met in the CAED are from the North African zone of the Sahel, and that Spain reached through the Canary Islands. “In a boat the world travels. Neither everyone is bad nor everyone is great,” he explains in reference to the news of the alleged rape. “All the people who are there are paying the consequences of what a single man has done,” he adds.
Entry and exit schedules
The nearly 2,000 people who spend there have entry and exit schedules. The center workers have not answered the questions of this newspaper about how it works today, but an ex -worker of that center explains that at the beginning of 2024 the time of departure was from 10.00 and the curfew at 22.00. The food was made at 13.00 and dinner at 20.00. If someone arrived later, I had to wait for the next meal. If someone returned after the closing time, they had to give an account of what their delay was due.
For Adolfo Rodríguez, president of the Official College of Social Educators of Madrid, it is a serious problem that this type of assistance is through “macrocentros”, because they are “oversized, impersonal and disconnected devices from the social fabric”. “They do not allow to guarantee adequate reception conditions or facilitate sustainable educational and inclusive processes,” he says. “The problem is not the ones who take care: failure is the model.”
At this time, the walls surrounding the center are painted with graffiti Red in which he puts “blacks to the cemetery” or “blacks are raping us and nobody does anything.” They sign the same color. “In Alcalá de Henares there are Nazi people and people who will not be enduring that they behave that way with vulnerable people,” says Alcalá, hosts. “These bad people who hate to hate also deny a clear fact: the people who need to flee and move to another place to continue living will continue to do so, they will try every time it takes,” he adds.
The mayor of Alcalá de Henares, Judith Piquet (PP), has asked for help from the television sets to stand for the government and close the center. In a recent interview in Four He pointed out that he has been demanding from the Government delegate for 20 months, Francisco Martín, to display “effective means to maintain security in the city” and in other statements he has accused him of considering the victims “first and second category depending on who commits the crime”.
For his part, the delegate has responded through a video that has uploaded to his X account in which he says that in 2024 “there were 13 sexual assaults with penetration” in the town and that only in the first quarter of 2025 there have already been five others. “Where was the Mrs. Mayor? All victims of sexual violence should worry us equally, whoever the aggressor is,” he added.
In any case of sexual violence, the first must be unconditional support and support for the victim. There is no political use or irresponsible signal.
I deeply regret that you have preferred to launch inadmissible accusations instead of acting with the …
– Fran Martín Aguirre (@franmartui)
