Sexual health for migrants in Spain's Ceuta: right or expense?

Ceuta and the cost of a right: migrants' sensual health

Does a migrant newly arrived in Ceuta have the right to have the State facilitate a satisfying sens life? The question sounds theoretical until someone proposes paying for it with public money. Then it becomes a matter of budgets, taxes and priorities.

A right with a bill attached

The defence of the idea was clear: sensual is a right, and newcomers lack the tools to exercise it in decent conditions. The proposed remedy consisted of paid volunteers or professionals to cover the gap. The counter-argument was not long in coming: psycho-affective sensual courses, Red Cross services and, above all, the warning that the bill would end up in the tax box of taxpayers who can barely make ends meet.

The core issue stands like this: sensual health as a social benefit has a cost, a beneficiary and a responsible party. And nobody agrees on who that responsible party should be.

The uncomfortable Spanish Civil War precedent

To rebut the proposal, a historical episode was brought up that works as a warning. In the 83rd Mixed Brigade of the People's Army of the Republic, on the Vinaroz front, sensual transmitted infections caused more hospitalisations than direct combat. Also mentioned was a voucher issued in Toledo in September 1936 by the Committee of Militias and City Defence, later turned into rhetorical ammunition.

The irony of the data serves at least to remind us that sensual health is not a whim: when education and prevention are lacking, the healthcare bill always arrives.

And here the consensus ends. If sensual is a right, it remains to be seen who pays for it. If it is not, someone will have to explain why the problem disappears by decree. In Ceuta, as on the 1936 front, the only certainty is that the bill is not paid by whoever makes jokes about it.