Far-Right groups in Spain have seized on the murder of an 11-year-old boy to stoke anti-immigration tensions.
In an incident with similarities to the recent UK killings in Southport, police have launched a manhunt to catch an unidentified knifeman who stabbed the child to death on Sunday.
The far-Right Falange party immediately tried to connect the murder with high levels of immigration in Spain. Falange is a continuation of the fascist organisation founded in the 1930s, which later formed the political structure of the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. It has for the most part been marginalised in modern Spain.
The victim, named only as Mateo, was playing football at a sports complex in the village of Mocejon, near Toledo, when a masked man burst onto the field and stabbed him multiple times, causing almost instant death.
The killer escaped, and his whereabouts remained unknown on Monday.
On Sunday, online agitators flagged the fact that 50 immigrant minors are being housed in a hotel in Mocejon. In response to the killing, the Falange party posted on X, formerly Twitter: “Massive, uncontrolled and illegal immigration has brought total insecurity to the streets of our cities, where attacks and murders occur almost daily.”
Family plead for calm
A cousin of the 11-year-old spoke to the media on Sunday, expressing the family’s pain over what he called an “atrocity” and pleading for calm in relation to the identity of the killer.
“No one should be accused based on their race or the colour of their skin,” said Asell Sanchez.
Sources from the Guardia Civil said they believe the suspect was a youth, possibly in his teens.
According to reports, witnesses said the killer approached three boys, including Mateo, who were playing on a football pitch at around 10am on Sunday. The other two children managed to flee.
The killer is believed to have entered and exited the sports centre by climbing a fence, and not through the main entrance. Reports said he ran away from the scene through an olive grove.
Santiago Abascal, the leader of the hard-Right Vox, Spain’s third-largest party, did not make a specific connection between the killing and immigration, but his official statement about the attack hinted at a new threat to Spanish society, despite the lack of information about the suspect’s identity.
“They are turning Spain into a country that is unrecognisable and dangerous for all generations, without distinction, from the youngest to our elderly,” said Mr Abascal.
Child migrants
Vox and other Right-wing organisations have been critical of a policy under which unaccompanied immigrant minors are being moved from the Canary Islands to regions on Spain’s mainland due to overcrowding in centres in the archipelago.
The Canary Islands house new child migrant arrivals in tents, but officials say they have no more capacity to cope with numbers. Of the 1,200 people who arrived in small boats in August, 200 were minors.
The islands’ authorities have more than 5,200 minors in care and say that, despite discussions with the Spanish government about distributing them across the country, only 65 have been transported to the mainland.
Last month, Vox broke off its coalitions and parliamentary support for governments led by the conservative People’s Party (PP) in six Spanish regions after the PP agreed to cooperate with Spain’s Left-wing national government on a plan to accommodate migrant minors across the country.
Three weeks ago, the UK was hit with a wave of far-Right riots after an alleged child killer in Southport was falsely identified as a Muslim refugee in social media posts.
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