Mallorca mayor's plea to house migrant children falls on deaf ears

Solidarity in words: the bill nobody wants at home

Opening your door and registering a newcomer is the litmus test for anyone who champions welcoming migrants. Municipal registration is not a symbolic gesture: it is the local register of habitual residence, and access to services and the per-capita distribution of funds hang on it. In the abstract, solidarity costs nothing. On the electricity bill, it does.

The case that sums up an entire party

In Mallorca, a mayor asked her councillors to take in unaccompanied minors. None accepted. The episode, reported by the press, circulates as a portrait of an uncomfortable contradiction: the very party calling for more reception places cannot find volunteers on its own benches. From the other side, the answer comes as a slogan: "Let Pedro Sánchez take them to La Moncloa."

Vertical charity, horizontal solidarity

The most common objection does not deny the problem, it changes the subject. One thing is charity — vertical, from giver to receiver — and another is solidarity, supposedly horizontal and collective, and therefore the state's responsibility rather than that of a specific family. An uncomfortable argument is raised against that thesis: generosity with other people's money costs nothing, and the one-way ticket — Madrid–Buenos Aires from 462 euros — is always available for anyone who does not want to share in the burden.

One figure remains on the table: 70,000 people in Ceuta, and 70,000 more besides. Nobody has yet said which flats they would live in, or who signs the contract. And there, exactly there, the analysis gets stuck.