Struggling for a life worse than they left behind
More than 17,300 undocumented migrants sailed into the hands of the Spanish authorities last year. There is hardly a day goes by when boatloads of hopeful African immigrants are not arrested as they attempt to make their way into Europe in search of a better life.
But that life generally begins in grim internment camps which are packed to capacity and offer living conditions barely fit for humans.
Last year was one of the worst years on record, immigration chiefs say.
Despite escalating fatalities on December 2, 15 immigrants were thought to have drowned off the Canary Island coast, following 45 Moroccans who were lost at the end of October the number of sub-Saharan Africans attempting to enter the country illegally continues to rise.
This year, fewer Moroccans have braved the hazardous crossing compared to other years, while more people are migrating from Mali, Senegal, the Gambia, Equatorial Guinea and the Ivory Coast, countries with which Spain does not hold repatriation agreements.
And under the immigration law here, which opposition parties argue has failed miserably, illegal migrants cannot be sent back if a repatriation agreement is not in place.
As the government trains its eye to look the other way, the human devastation of the failings of the immigration policy are to be found at one abandoned hothouse near the city of NĂjar, in the southern region of AlmerĂa.
It is in AlmerĂa where the hothouse agriculture boom took off in the early 1990s, and it is to AlmerĂa where the greatest concentration of Africans flock to look for work as farm labourers.
But these people cannot work legally as they do not have their papers in order. Nor can they be deported as there is no repatriation agreement in place.
So at NĂjar it is a case of survival of the fittest. When food supplies from the local charities run out, the immigrants are left to scour the local dustbins or rubbish tips for food. For the most part, life in Africa was never as bad as life on these human dumps in Spain.
"The vast majority of them have made the difficult journey in vain," says Gabriel Ataya, the chief of the Agricultural Workers' Syndicate (SOC).
Today, 170 Africans, all of them men and the majority of them under the age of 25, are crammed onto a deserted site on the outskirts of NĂjar. There, ramshackle, vermin-infested huts, sheltered by sheets of plastic, have become their makeshift homes.
There is no running water, no toilets, no cooking facilities. And as the winter rains pour down, the camp is awash with sewage and rubbish. The camp is not unlike Europe's worst images of Africa's worst back roads.
"The residents live off solidarity," says Mr Ataya. "Some of them work, but in a sporadic kind of way. Two days here, three days there. And those who earn a wage help those who don't."
It is the government that is to blame, he argues, and the contradictory immigration policy. "Local NGOs are doing the work of the government, giving out food and trying to improve the immigrants' living conditions."
But such short-term measures paint a bleak future. "The Spanish government doesn't value these people," says Mr Ataya, who immigrated to Spain 12 years ago from an African country he does not want to identify.
"It is left up to the likes of us to seek solutions. We are in no position to do that but we have to try at least."
The greatest change in the past 12 years is the "diminishing political will" to address the phenomenon, says Gabriel, who marvels at the enthusiasm on the part of the immigrants to find that sought-after life. "As they struggle from day to day, they still dream of integrating into Spanish society," he says.
"These people are strong," he argues, "and they have to hold on to that dream somehow." Otherwise life in this no-man's land would have little meaning.
