Spain’s ex-Prime Minister calls for more foreign aid to address immigration

Spain’s ex-Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, called for more foreign aid to address the issue of immigration yesterday, while speaking at the Global South Forum at the Castillo de San José in Arrecife.

Rajoy, who led Spain’s conservative PP government from 2011 to 2018, said that EU countries should reach an agreement to increase foreign aid to improve conditions and opportunities in migrants’ source countries: “We have to try to increase the standard of life in these countries,” he commented.

Rajoy also argued that “Europe’s great challenge is to achieve a common foreign and security policy,” at a time when “Russia is back” and US President Donald Trump is making some “outrageous” decisions.

He claimed that the EU had been a “success story” but highlighted “energy, technology, and security and defence” as the three important sectors where Europe was too dependent on external factors.

Rajoy also criticised the current Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, accusing him of “cheap populism” with the slogan “No to war” when the Iran war is “one that nobody wants”. “Spain should be standing alongside the democracies, where we belong,” he said, adding “You should not use foreign policy as an element of domestic policy.”  

Rajoy has not visited Lanzarote since 2010, when an air controllers’ strike forced him to remain on the island and photos of him enjoying a “bar crawl” in Arrecife were widely published.