Albiol Says Migrants From Canaries Are Housed in Lloret de Mar Hotel
PP candidate Xavier García Albiol says the Spanish government is housing irregular migrants from the Canary Islands in Costa Brava hotels. His claims and demands.
Xavier García Albiol, mayor of Badalona and the Partido Popular’s lead candidate in Barcelona province for the Congreso de los Diputados (Spain’s lower house), says the central government has moved irregular migrants who arrived in the Canary Islands into three-star hotels on the Costa Brava, with full board paid by the state. He filmed what he described as dozens of them at a hotel in Lloret de Mar, ABC reported.
Albiol is demanding that Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez immediately stop sending migrants to Catalan towns. The claims come in the campaign for the Nov. 29 general election.
What Albiol says he found
Albiol first raised the issue on X on Nov. 11. He wrote that people at the hotel tried to hide the migrants when they saw him, and that the transfers had been ordered by Sánchez. In a video posted on Nov. 12, he said the migrants were being moved to several Catalan municipalities without warning, behind the backs of residents and town halls.
According to Albiol, the government pays for the hotel stays and all meals with taxpayers’ money. He contrasted that with Catalan families struggling to pay mortgages, rent and grocery bills, and argued that the arrangement encourages more people to come to Spain, which he called a “pull effect.”
The hotel was not named in ABC’s report, and the number of people Albiol says he saw there was given only as dozens. He did not say how much the stays cost; he is asking the government to disclose that figure.
What he is demanding
In his posts, Albiol called for:
- an immediate halt to the distribution of irregular migrants across Catalonia;
- an urgent explanation of what these operations really cost;
- an end to policies that, in his view, attract more migration.
He said he would take the fight to Congress if elected and asked voters to back him.
What it means for the campaign
Immigration has become a main issue in the race. Surveys by the CIS (Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, Spain’s state polling institute) have for months ranked it among voters’ biggest concerns, behind only the housing crisis, ABC reported.
The PP, led nationally by Alberto Núñez Feijóo, wants tougher migration rules. Its program for Nov. 29 would give priority in public aid to people with roots in the area (arraigo) and would set up return centers for migrants in countries outside the European Union.
Albiol has campaigned on the subject for months. He has also criticized the case of a Moroccan family evicted in Vitoria that, he says, receives two thousand four hundred fifty euros a month in benefits.
For people in Lloret de Mar and other Costa Brava towns, the dispute concerns the placement of migrants from the Canary Islands in local hotels and how much town halls were told in advance. The central government’s response to Albiol’s claims was not disclosed.
Source: ABC
