Spain

MADRID, May 21 (Xinhua) -- Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Friday that his country will reopen to travelers from ten countries, including China and the United Kingdom (UK), "without restrictions or sanitary requirements" from May 24.

The other countries are Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Israel, South Korea, Thailand, Rwanda and Japan.

CEUTA, Spain (AP) — Residents of Spain’s multi-ethnic city of Ceuta are used to being in the news every time the fragile alliance between Spain and Morocco shakes up.

For many “Ceutis,” as locals are known, that comes with being a speck of a European nation in North Africa. The city is culturally closely intertwined with Morocco, with Muslims making over 40% of its population, but also separated from it by high perimeter fences that set apart the two extremes of poverty and prosperity.

20 May 2021; MEMO: Spain has sent around 4,800 of the 8,000 migrants who crossed into its African enclave of Ceuta back to Morocco, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said yesterday.

Relative calm has returned to the beaches of Ceuta where a record influx of migrants had arrived on its shores from Morocco starting Monday, after Moroccan security forces appeared to relax border controls.

19 May 2021; MEMO: Morocco was justified in relaxing controls at the border between it and Spain's North African enclave of Ceuta in view of Madrid's decision to admit a sick Western Sahara independence leader to hospital, Reuters reported a minister in Rabat suggesting.

Around 8,000 migrants entered the enclave on Monday and Tuesday by swimming in or climbing over the fence, and Spain deployed troops there to patrol the border.

(Reuters) --- Spain has deployed troops to Ceuta to patrol the border with Morocco after thousands of migrants swam into the northern African enclave, in what Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called a serious crisis for Spain and Europe.

Soldiers in armoured vehicles were guarding Ceuta's beach on Tuesday. Dozens of migrants swimming and wading close to the beach appeared to be moving away from where troops stood. Hundreds of other potential migrants stood on the Moroccan side of the fence that separates the Spanish enclave from Morocco.

MADRID, May 14. /TASS/: Russia and Spain have reiterated their drive towards closer cooperation in combating terrorism, the Spanish foreign ministry tweeted on Friday.

According to the ministry, the ministry’s Director General of Foreign and Security Policy Fidel Sendagorta and visiting Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Oleg Syromolotov co-chaired the 11th session of the joint working group on combating terrorism in Madrid.

MADRID, May 9 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Spain has lifted a state of emergency in place since October to fight the pandemic, allowing Spaniards to travel between regions for the first time in months.

Although the emergency measure, which expired at midnight (2200 GMT Saturday) will lead to more freedoms, it is a headache for the country’s 17 regional governments responsible for health care.

The state of emergency provided them with a legal framework to impose measures — such as nighttime curfews or a ban on non-essential travel between regions — that limited freedoms.

MADRID, May 7 (Xinhua) -- Some Western countries are determined to demonize China to better protect their status, but the "distraction" can be "fatal" if their structural problems continue to worsen, an expert on China has said.

Such structural problems include "the loss of democratic quality at the hands of oligarchies that despise the common good," said Xulio Rios, director of the Observatory of Chinese Politics in Spain, said in an article published in the observatory's website on May 4.

MADRID (AP) — Madrid’s conservative leader, a champion of relaxed measures against the coronavirus and a scourge of the left-wing central government’s handling of the pandemic, scored a solid win in a regional election Tuesday.

Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who had campaigned under the slogan of “Freedom,” was backed by 44% of voters, up from 22% in the last election two years ago, with 99% of the ballot counted. Three rival left-wing parties together had 41%.

MADRID (AP) — Two young Senegalese men met on a Europe-bound migrant boat in 2006, a year that saw a record influx of Africans to Spain’s Canary Islands.

Since then, one died of a heart attack running away from Spanish police and the other is running in a polarized election Tuesday for a seat in Madrid’s regional assembly.

Serigne Mbaye not only wants to fight what he considers to be “structural racism” against African migrants but also to defy a history of underrepresentation of the Black community and other people of color in Spanish politics.