“I only worry about my child,” she said, unfolding medical records worn soft from handling respiratory problems. “The doctor told me I had to move. But we don’t have any place to go.”

Morocco’s government has issued 416 permits authorising the import of European waste — clothes, rubber tires, industrial byproducts — burned as fuel in cement kilns across the Casablanca-Settat region, including within 15 kilometers of her home. In 2024 alone, actual imports reached 821,500 tonnes, nearly triple the annual average of the previous three years, a surge consistent with companies racing to ship before the approaching EU export ban. European corporations save over $52 million every year by shipping their waste here instead of processing it at home. 

Fatima doesn’t know all of that, what she does know is that her son can’t breathe, and that some nights the smell reaches dozens of kilometers from the landfill.

An investigation, based on exclusive trade data from the Basel Action Network, customs records, and Freedom of Information responses, found that European countries shipped at least 36,611 tons of waste to Morocco in a single year — 93 percent of it classified as “reusable” despite declared values as low as €0.10 per kilogram, a price that suggests disposal, not resale. 

The Economics of Dumping

Understanding why European waste ends up in Moroccan communities requires following the money. The arithmetic is brutally simple.

Treating waste properly in Europe costs estimated conservatively about $100 per ton. Shipping it to Morocco and burning it in cement kilns costs approximately $36 to $39. For a company processing 100,000 tons annually, the savings exceed $6 million a year. Across the entire waste trade, European corporations pocket more than $52 million annually — calculated from the roughly $62 gap between European treatment costs and Moroccan processing costs, applied across the 821,500 tonnes imported in 2024.

Data obtained from the Basel Action Network (BAN) covering September 2024 through September 2025, reveals how the pipeline operates. In that 12 month period alone, European countries shipped 36,611 tons of documented waste to Morocco, including clothing, plastics, paper, and electronics. The real volume is likely higher; this figure represents only what was officially recorded under waste codes. Shipments reclassified as “secondary raw materials,” “reusable goods,” or “alternative fuel” before leaving Europe drop out of waste tracking entirely.

Spain emerges as Europe’s primary waste gateway to Morocco, handling nearly 80 percent of clothing exports and two-thirds of plastic waste, 73 tons of worn clothing shipped daily from a single country. Spanish waste management companies profit from both low transport costs across the Mediterranean and Morocco’s minimal environmental oversight.

The declared values tell their own story. Romania declares clothing at €0.10 per kilogram. Poland declares identical goods at €1.02, a tenfold difference for the same customs code. Industry sale prices for sorted reusable clothing run between €0.50 and €1.50 per kilogram; Poland’s declaration sits inside that band, Romania’s far below it. 

The gap suggests not just different markets but different goods—genuinely reusable clothing commands higher prices, while low declared values indicate material destined for disposal rather than resale.

According to the European Environment Agency, the fate of used textiles exported from the EU is “highly uncertain,” with material unfit for reuse mostly ending up in open landfills and informal waste streams. 

Ninety-three percent of waste in the Basel data is classified as “worn clothing.” But industry estimates suggest only half or less of such shipments actually reach secondhand markets. The rest becomes Morocco’s problem—feeding the cement kilns at Jorf Lasfar, Morocco’s largest industrial port zone 120 kilometers south of Casablanca, entering industrial facilities across the Casablanca-Settat region, disappearing into a system with no transparency about what happens next.

Major corporate players are embedded in this supply chain. The French firm CHIMIREC established a Moroccan subsidiary in 2020 to produce “Energy Substitution Fuel” (ESF) for cement manufacturers. When contacted, CHIMIREC Maroc denied any involvement in European waste imports and exports, stating it processes exclusively domestic waste. LafargeHolcim’s Ecoval subsidiary is the country’s primary industrial waste treatment provider. Ciments du Maroc, owned by Germany’s Heidelberg Materials, operates a grinding center near the Jorf Lasfar port, a documented entry point for European waste shipments. LafargeHolcim and Ciments du Maroc did not respond to requests for comment.

Since 2016, the Ministry of Energy Transition and Sustainable Development has issued 416 permits for waste imports, authorizing more than 2.5 million tons of European waste to enter the country. In 2024 alone, imports reached 821,500 tons—nearly a third of the entire decade’s total in a single year, a surge consistent with the approaching EU ban deadline. 

The Moroccan total is larger than the 36,611 tonnes recorded by BAN because the two datasets measure different stages of the same pipeline: BAN tracks European shipments still declared under waste codes — clothing, plastics, paper, electronics — while Morocco’s ministry counts everything that arrives as “recyclable raw materials”. 

The gap between the two figures is essentially the volume reclassified out of the waste category before it leaves Europe. The ministry has described the program as a strategic pillar of Morocco’s circular economy, projecting 60,000 jobs by 2030. The government frames waste as a valuable resource essential for industrial energy, a narrative that obscures the health costs borne by communities like those in Mediouna.

The Loopholes

International law nominally restricts wealthy nations from dumping hazardous waste on poorer ones. The Basel Convention, ratified by over 190 countries, requires “Prior Informed Consent” for transboundary movements of hazardous materials. But that consent, as the convention is written, operates between governments — not between governments and residents who live downwind.

In practice, the regulations contain loopholes large enough to drive a container ship through. 

Reclassified materials require none of these protections. A single word change on a customs form,  from “waste” to “secondary raw material”, transforms a regulated substance into an unregulated commodity.

Trade records obtained for this investigation reveal the scale of the fiction. 93 percent of waste shipped to Morocco is classified as “reusable clothing” or “secondary materials,” but declared values of €0.10 per kilogram suggest these shipments are waste destined for disposal, not genuine merchandise.

According to data collected through a Freedom of Information Request, the Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA) told us that between 2020 and 2023, no Italian waste was registered as having been sent to Morocco “for disposal purposes” — but, in the same response, acknowledged that “small quantities” were shipped during 2021, 2022 and 2023 “for the purpose of material recovery.” 

UN Comtrade records for 2023 show approximately 817 tonnes of Italian rubber waste reaching Morocco that year, worth around $427,000. The following year, in August 2024 alone, Morocco’s Ministry of Energy Transition authorised the import of 20,000 tonnes of waste specifically from Italy. 

This glaring contradiction could be the result of a regulatory loophole in how Europe counts what leaves its ports: under EU law, burning waste in a cement kiln is officially classified as “energy recovery” rather than “disposal” .

Through labeling their exported garbage as alternative fuel for Moroccan kilns or misclassifying it as reusable merchandise at customs, European countries can legally erase millions of tons of waste from their disposal ledgers, outsourcing their pollution while keeping their domestic recycling statistics pristine. 

Cristina Guarda, Italian MPE from the Greens/EFA, confirms that the topic is on the European agenda. “The goal is to reduce the areas where opacity can take root, clarify responsibilities throughout the supply chain, and establish the principle that exports are acceptable only if companies can genuinely demonstrate environmentally sound management, with equivalent and verifiable standards”

The Human Cost

One hundred twenty kilometers south of Casablanca, the industrial zone at Jorf Lasfar stretches along Morocco’s Atlantic coast. Container ships dock at a port with 37-million-ton annual capacity. Cement plants rise in silhouette against the sky. Trucks move constantly between the port and processing facilities, carrying material that began its journey in European cities and will end it in Moroccan furnaces.

The health impacts accumulate invisibly. Communities living near Moroccan cement plants face an excess risk of respiratory disease, cancer incidence and mortality, predominantly affecting the respiratory tract in both children and adults. 

Research consistently finds that people living near cement plants are up to nearly five times more likely to report respiratory symptoms than those with no such exposure. In Morocco specifically, occupational cement exposure has been directly linked to Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, one of the leading causes of respiratory mortality.

When rubber tires burn in cement kilns without adequate emission controls, they release dioxins and furans, among the most toxic substances known to science, along with heavy metals including lead, mercury, and cadmium. A peer-reviewed study measuring emissions from cement kilns burning hazardous waste found dioxin levels more than four times higher than baseline (1.57 vs. 6.49 nanograms per cubic metre) — and rising further as more hazardous waste was added to the fuel mix, with emissions rising further as the co-processing ratio increases.

A synthesis by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has documented that where emissions controls on such kilns are inadequate, surrounding communities show elevated rates of respiratory, skin, and gastrointestinal illness.

Morocco cannot yet manage its own domestic waste crisis. The Mediouna landfill alone receives 1.2 million tonnes a year and is approaching saturation. In November 2024, the World Bank approved a $250 million programme to upgrade the country’s landfills — a tacit acknowledgement that existing capacity is inadequate before any additional burden from imports. Casablanca cannot absorb more pollution, let alone safely process hundreds of thousands of tons shipped from Europe each year. 

When the government approved more than two million tons of new waste imports from various European countries in August 2024, activist Mohamed Benata of the Environmental Assembly of Northern Morocco called it “incompatible with the spirit of citizenship” and unconstitutional. In 2016, similar outrage over Italian waste imports sparked widespread protests and social media campaigns, forcing the government to suspend the imports. Yet despite this resistance, the waste continues to arrive.

European corporate accountability law, for its part, does not reach far enough to catch what happens after the shipments leave port. The Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, adopted by the EU in 2024 to oblige large companies to police human rights and environmental harms across their supply chains, stops at the point of sale. 

“CSDDD ends with handing over the goods more or less,” Miriam Saage-Maaß, legal director at the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, said of the directive’s reach. Whether European exporters bear any legal responsibility for what happens to their waste inside Moroccan cement kilns, she added, “depends on how direct EU exporters are connected to the waste burning.”

“The EU is strengthening controls and obligations,” says Guarda, while mentioning the new 2024 Waste Shipment Regulation that sets out stricter rules on the export of waste to non-EU countries. “But the real leap forward must be cultural and industrial,” she adds. “Circularity cannot become an elegant way to outsource health and environmental impacts to other communities. We need a pathway that reduces the problem at the source, increases producer responsibility and leads to waste management that is consistent with climate and health protection objectives, without creating ‘sacrifice zones’ outside Europe.”

Time is running out, but not for the reasons Fatima might hope. From 21 November 2026, the EU will ban all plastic waste exports to non-OECD countries like Morocco, with no approved-list escape route for plastics. For other non-hazardous waste such as metals and paper, exports will be banned from May 2027 unless a country is on an approved list; Morocco submitted its application to be included by the 21 February 2025 deadline.

Whether that ban will actually stop the flow, or simply push it through new classification channels, is contested. When the regulation was adopted in 2024, the Environmental Investigation Agency, an international environmental NGO, warned that its real effect on waste exports would depend on how strictly EU member states transpose and enforce it, and on whether the remaining loopholes are closed. 

One such channel is already emerging inside EU policy itself, in December 2025, the European Commission proposed Union-wide end-of-waste criteria for mechanically recycled plastics, which would allow such materials to circulate across the bloc without being classified as waste at all.

“The longer the chain of parties involved, the shorter the chain of enforcement: controls on thousands of containers travelling through ports are extremely complex. The official data we have on Morocco could be not everything that it’s actually exported, but unofficial flows are undetectable”, says Paola Ficco, environmental lawyer and director of the magazine Rivista Rifiuti.

Back in Mediouna, Fatima remains caught in the middle. While Europe celebrates its recycling milestones and Morocco counts the jobs and greens its image, she and families like hers in Casablanca are plagued by air and soil pollution from domestic and exported waste.

This story was developed with the support of Journalismfund Europe

The post Toxic Trade: How Europe Exports Its Waste to Morocco and Calls It Recycling appeared first on Untold.

Since arriving in Grenoble several days earlier he had been alone — the friends he made on his journey from Istanbul seven weeks earlier had gone separate ways, and he was left alone again for the final leg of his journey, bored and anxious for his journey to end. This time he was taking public transport — the risk of arrest and deportation in southern France and Spain was low. The days of hiding indoors and sneaking across borders were behind him. He had no idea what to expect, but knew that he had to do whatever it takes to make this work — it had cost him everything to make it this far, and it had to work.

Back in Morocco he could never have imagined the scale of the greenhouses laid out before him. The bus lumbered past hundreds of plastic covered greenhouses, momentarily exposed by vehicle headlights and street lamps. The repeating patterns of white plastic held in place by taught metal wires and chains made him dizzy, so he turned his attention to his mobile phone — his one link to home. He wondered what his mother was doing at that moment, if his nephews and nieces were thinking about him. He hoped he could make them proud and send them money to help with spiralling living costs back home. His attention snapped back to the present as the bus stopped abruptly — San Isidro de Níjar. His stop. His future.

* Rachid’s name has been changed for his protection.

“All my assumptions were wrong”

Rachid is one of more than 100,000 migrants living in Almería, in southern Spain, working in the vast expanse of greenhouses known as the Sea of Plastic. The province contains over 33,000 hectares of tightly packed, low-lying greenhouses covered in decaying plastic sheeting to keep the harsh wind at bay and maintain a warm and humid environment year-round. These conditions have made Almería the vegetable garden of Europe. It has flung the 15,000 families who own the land here from poverty in the 1940s to one of the richest provinces in Spain. And its success relies on the continuous supply of desperate, readily exploited migrant workers.

Almería produces over 3.8 million tonnes of fruit and vegetables each year, with 80% of production destined for export — mainly Germany, France and the United Kingdom. Chances are, if you go down to any supermarket or greengrocer, especially in winter and spring, and look at the label on boxes of tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and aubergines, much will come from Almería. But this convenient access to year-round, low-cost fruit and vegetables has a cost. Fragile wetland and desert ecosystems have been stripped and sterilised, covered with plastic. The ancient aquifer up to a kilometre below the ground has been overexploited, now tainted with salty seawater and agrochemicals. Over 33,000 tonnes of thin plastic sheeting is discarded every year — it litters the landscape, clogging temporary riverbeds and drifting into the nearby Cabo de Gata Natural Park like dystopian tumbleweed.

There are social costs, too. Only two thirds of the workforce here is legally registered and documented — the rest are employed illegally as they desperately wait for documents, exploited and underpaid, and frequently exposed to dangerous heat, chemicals and labour abuse, even physical and sexual assault. But the authorities turn a blind eye to their suffering — cheap labour is vital for the economic stability of the region.

Amongst the greenhouses, I sit with Rachid in his small breeze-block house in the chabola (an informal settlement of very basic dwellings made from breeze blocks and discarded greenhouse palettes and plastic sheeting) as we share iftar during Ramadan. “I thought that I would come here and find easy work, but all my assumptions were wrong” — he explains his difficulty in finding work since arriving in January, working only a few days in his first months before finding work a few days earlier in a greenhouse 8 kilometres away. As we chat, his housemate waves goodbye — “He’s off to break fast with his friends”, he smiles. I ask him about his impressions of the chabola when he first arrived — “I felt a kind of exhaustion and fatigue, and soon enough a lot of suffering awaited me here. But I felt very happy when I saw my friends — they offered me food, drink, and clothes, and I felt joy”. Although he faced an uncertain and challenging future here, a sense of community kept him hopeful. Hope was something that had been missing at home for a long time.

“Leaving wasn’t a choice”

Rachid is from the south of Morocco, a member of the Amazigh people indigenous to North Africa. He tells me how much he loves his country, but that institutionalised corruption and poor governance have left the people of Morocco struggling and with few alternatives. “I came to Spain because of the low income I was making, as well as the lack of responsibility and accountability of the government in Morocco, their indifference to management, and the absence of fairness and justice.” Rachid is an intelligent young man. At 24 years old he is under no illusions about how hard life will be in Almería, but is sure his life back in Morocco would have been much harder. “Before I came here, I was studying law in Morocco. I studied for two years at university, but I saw how even with a degree you have to bribe your way into a job at the end. I lost hope, so I left my degree and then went to work in a hotel. I loved that very much — showing people our beautiful country.”

Despite loving this role, he soon came across the problem so many people in Morocco struggle with. Around two thirds of employment in the country is informal, resulting in poor labour protections, low wages and exploitation. Youth unemployment has been steadily increasing over the past decade, reaching almost 40% in 2024. Young Moroccans seem to have little hope of sustainable economic opportunities. Over the last half century, Morocco has become a significant source of migrants to Europe, and stricter EU immigration policies have had little effect on the numbers of immigrants, with irregular migration increasing substantially. Countries like Italy and Spain, with relaxed approaches to regularisation of their undocumented migrant labour force, are seen as particularly attractive solutions for generations of Moroccans (and other African people) facing increasingly uncertain prospects at home.

The economic uncertainty in Morocco stems partly from primary industries that are easily susceptible to shocks, like tourism and agriculture. Morocco’s own greenhouse agriculture is experiencing a steady increase in area, but much of this growth appears to be through foreign land grabs, resulting in offshoring of income. In addition, there is a mismatch between education and labour demand, meaning that the few students in tertiary education, like Rachid, typically face high competition and limited employment prospects upon completion. Morocco also has challenging demographics, with 40% of the population under 30 years old, and high competition for employment as a result. The failure of the Arab Spring movement to drive change has also resulted in widespread political disillusionment.

The challenging situation in Morocco is also made worse by strong external influence. The EU-Morocco Association Agreement (2000) opened up trade between Morocco and the EU, but favoured large, foreign-owned agribusinesses, leaving small-scale farmers struggling to compete. Along with the EU-Morocco Fisheries Partnership Agreement, international trade favours the EU and systematically depletes sovereign resources like fish stocks, disproportionately affecting small businesses and artisanal fishers and farmers. Despite the Fisheries Partnership Agreement being ruled illegal by the EU’s own Court of Justice, the profitable agreement persists.

Furthermore, during the 1980s and ’90s Morocco was pressured into enacting Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) designed by international financial institutions to develop a technologically advanced but highly dependent economy, which resulted in cuts to public spending on essential services like education and healthcare. These external influences come straight out of the Food Imperialism Playbook. The inevitable result: an exodus of migrants, many to the vast greenhouses of Almería.

“As soon as we crossed the border, I lost everyone”

Most Moroccans arrive in Spain over land from Türkiye. Almost 100,000 people arrived in the EU this way in 2024, around a quarter of all irregular migration. Moroccan citizens do not need visas to enter Türkiye, so a direct flight puts them directly at the EU border. Whilst crossing the Mediterranean is feasible, few Moroccans travel this way: “The sea is very difficult, and choosing the Mediterranean route means choosing death itself”, Rachid tells me.

The land route from Istanbul is far from easy, with multiple border crossings patrolled by aggressive and violent border police intent on pushing migrants back. Deportations along this route typically involve forcing people back over the last border, meaning that migration is often just a matter of time and persistence.

During my time in Spain I have met many Moroccans who travelled by this route. The challenges they face are typically related to how much they can afford to pay organised traffickers. Those who can afford it are driven in private vehicles and smuggled into safe houses whilst they wait for opportune moments to cross borders. Those less fortunate walk thousands of miles through forest rails and mountains on foot, clinging under truck chassis for hours on end in the hopes of evading capture.

Rachid tells me of his experience crossing into Bulgaria:

“We crossed into Bulgaria at 6 am but maybe one kilometre in, the army found us with a lot of dogs searching for us. Everyone ran in different directions and I lost the group. I ran as fast as I could to escape and then finally collapsed and slept in the forest. At 5 am the next morning. I found a big road going towards Sofia. I walked along it for hours in the cold, without food, without drink, without anything. When I entered a supermarket, one person there told me he would call the police, so I ran”.

Eventually, Rachid found a service station with free wifi and reconnected with the trafficker who helped him cross as far as Croatia, but he was arrested and deported twice along the way. From there the journey became a little easier, with social organisations providing respite along the way, and police violence less of a risk.

“Many people cannot find work”

Despite having made it to Spain, Rachid’s journey is far from over. Whilst vital to the region’s economy, many undocumented migrants live in slums hewn from discarded pallets and plastic sheeting from the greenhouses. Around 120 of these chabolas lie hidden amongst the thousands of greenhouses — of various sizes and construction. Without access to running water or sanitation, they face problems with health and fires occur frequently.

Their undocumented status means that greenhouse owners get away with paying them well below the minimum wage — Rachid tells me he earns 40 Euro per 8-hour day, but pay is docked when heat prevents them from working. Already in March, the greenhouses are 20 degrees Celsius warmer than outside. In the summer they will reach 60 degrees Celsius. Many people are forced to work more days than they are paid. The threat of being fired stops them from complaining. Wage theft is common.

Despite these difficulties, there are far more people here than there are opportunities. “I had great difficulty finding work here in the greenhouses because of the overcrowding”, Rachid tells me. “I know many people who find it difficult to find work when they arrive here”. Moroccans join a host of other nationalities amongst the greenhouses of Almería, and the region’s reputation as an easy place to work without papers has meant a rapid leap in immigrants from West Africa — 46,843 people arrived in the Canary Islands by small boat in 2024, with many heading to Almería. A number of migrants from Senegal explained that many people sleep in stairwells, unable to find work or accommodation.

But for Rachid, two months of searching have paid off — he finally secured a job in a greenhouse 8 kilometres away from his shack. The work is incredibly hard, he explains, but he knows he is working for a better future for himself and his family, to whom he is now able to send money home: “Whenever I am working I just think about my family. I just want to get my papers and go and see my mother”.

There are social organisations here working to support the migrants. A suite of organisations, like the Red Cross and Cáritas, offer vital Spanish lessons in the chabolas and local community centres. They also help navigate challenging bureaucracy in the effort to get papers. A local trade union, SOC-SAT, supports cases of labour abuse and helps workers to organise and improve working conditions. But the demand for exploitable labour is constant.

The greenhouses here are still growing, in both size and intensity of production. As soon as workers get their paperwork and can leave, many move on from Almería to less exploitative opportunities and places. This creates a constant throughflow of desperate, readily-exploited people. Every few years, many of the hundreds of thousands of workers here move on, creating a vacuum that is immediately filled by other migrants. As long as Europe’s demand for year-round, low-cost fruit and vegetables continues without minimum wholesale prices, this exploitation will increase. As long as international trade pressure on countries like Morocco and Senegal continues, the supply of desperate people looking for hope will carry on.

“Despite everything… life is better than in Morocco”

Despite the difficult conditions, Rachid has no regrets: “Would I want to go back to Morocco right now? No, because here life is better than Morocco. Even though it’s my own country, I don’t like what it stands for. There are no jobs there, the government is corrupt”. Spain is beginning to feel like home.

Rachid’s experience is not unique — it is shared by tens of thousands of migrants who leave a lack of opportunities at home only to face new kinds of challenges in Europe. The dangers of the journey are not a temporary hardship, but a glimpse of the exploitation and insecurity that awaits them in places like Almería. However, for many people, this remains their only viable option. Europe continues to benefit from exploited labour to fill supermarket shelves with year-round fruit and vegetables, while the human cost is hidden behind sheets of plastic and institutional indifference. Without coordinated international action and accountability, the system will remain rigged in favour of profit — and the suffering of those like Rachid will remain out of sight, and out of mind.

*This story was originally published in The New Climate

The post Rachid’s Journey: How Our Food System Exploits ‘Illegal’ Migration appeared first on Untold.

As I make eye contact, I’m greeted with deep smiles and an “Hola! Que tal?” (Hello, how are you?). They continue to ferry their belongings out to the roadside – items scattered haphazardly in the dirt.

These men are amongst 50 people ordered to leave their homes in the asentamiento of Cortijo El Uno (informal settlements, called ‘chabolas’ in Spanish), including women and 9 children. This group is from Morocco – one man tells me he’s lived in his house for just over a year, and another has been here for four years. They work in the greenhouses around Almería in southern Spain, helping to produce millions of tonnes of produce each year, like tomatoes, courgettes, aubergines and peppers. 

The men I speak to, like tens of thousands of others in the region, are undocumented – working without legal papers, unprotected and exploited. They live here because they cannot find affordable accommodation in the region.

These people experience hardship and labour exploitation performing vital jobs that sustain Almería’s greenhouse export industry, part of a continued economic growth in multinational supermarkets profiteering from the world’s poorest. 

Precarious Work, Precarious Homes

This is private land, however, and space that could be turned into yet another productive greenhouse. The land owner began eviction proceedings back in 2011, with an eviction notice finally being granted by the local authorities in summer 2024. But the date for the eviction was only set days before, giving the inhabitants little practical forewarning. Having been left in limbo for over six months, there has been a desperate and apparently largely fruitless scramble for alternative accommodation. 

A number of local charities and organisations that support migrants in the region have condemned this process – five religious organisations published a statement expressing their outrage at the lack of alternative accommodation options for the inhabitants and young families who lived in Cortijo El Uno. One of these, the Jesuit Service for Migrants (SJM), was representing the group and actively supporting inhabitants on the eviction day as a formal observer.

A History of Erasure

This is not the first eviction of an informal settlement – in July 2024, the Cañaveral chabola, home to 20 migrants from West Africa, was demolished. In that case, however, SJM had worked for a year with the residents to arrange alternative housing in the town of San Isidro before the local town council bulldozers moved in. 

As the bulldozer moves in, a local activist tells me that the story of El Walili is in the forefront of everyone’s minds. This was the settlement of 500 people that was destroyed in January 2023, with inhabitants given no alternatives. 

The authorities had initially intended to rehouse them in the barracks at Los Grillos, but these have only recently been finished after two years of stalled construction, and a management firm to enact the planned 24-hour surveillance and curfew has yet to be found. Particularly disturbing were the fires that broke out as people were being evicted, sealing the fate of the settlement. 

These evictions are not the result of isolated land disputes – these are part of a plan by the authorities to rid the region of informal settlements. El Walili was undoubtedly targeted because of its location on a main tourist road to the Cabo de Gata Natural Park, but it signalled the start of an official policy to remove all settlements in the region. 

It has been estimated that there are more than 90 informal migrant settlements across Almeria’s Níjar province of varying sizes. The authorities plan to destroy these but have no practical alternatives in place for the thousands of inhabitants working in the intensive greenhouse industry responsible for the region’s economic success.

Meanwhile, a police officer at the eviction of Cortijo El Uno was asked by an activist why they were conducting the eviction, “we’re destroying this place for their own good, they can’t live in these conditions”, the officer responded. The activist replied, “But where will they go now? They have nowhere and the alternative is so much worse!”.

With only a few days’ notice, some inhabitants have temporarily stayed with friends. Around a dozen people were still in their homes when the police arrived shortly after 9am, and half a dozen men are still removing their belongings as the bulldozers begin razing the first dwellings. Despite the mild climate, it is winter here, and inland, temperatures drop well into single digits and the ground is wet. Many people will end up sleeping rough. 

This eviction comes at a time when work in the greenhouses is hardest to find – some inhabitants tell me that there is often little available work at this time of the year because crops are growing slowly and some farmers are pausing between campaigns. 

The Cost of Europe’s Year-Round Harvest

The situation for migrants in the province of Almería looks bleak. More than 100,000 greenhouse workers are needed in the region, with most of these filled by migrants. A little over a quarter of these are filled by undocumented migrants, many of whom share jobs, meaning that more than 25,000 people are being employed illegally. 

A Senegalese man who worked in greenhouses long enough to obtain residency in Spain tells me that there are far more people in the region than there are jobs, and many are without work. A group of Gambian men tell me how hard it is to find affordable accommodation in the region, themselves relying on temporary housing supported by a local charity. 

All of the migrants here have taken long and dangerous journeys in the hope of a better life and a means of supporting their families back home – whether on foot from Turkey or by small boat from West Africa. This latter route can take up to 10 days for the c. 2,500km journey and recent reports suggest a death rate of more than 1-in-5. 

These are gruelling, psychologically damaging journeys, but people take this risk because they have no hope at home – earlier this year, a woman from West Africa gave birth on a boat aiming for Tenerife.

The eviction of Cortijo El Uno is another step towards planned eradication of the unsightly ‘chabolas’ in the province of Almería. Without viable alternatives, their vulnerable inhabitants will be pushed further into the margins. 

Meanwhile, the greenhouse agriculture in the region continues to rely on them for more than 25% of its labour force. This paradox leaves people trapped in the in-between space risking their own lives to sustain a sector responsible for the dramatic economic success of the region and of Spain – almost 3 million Euro is made in the region from horticultural exports. These are the impacts of the cheap, year-round, perfect vegetable systems – we should know their real price.

The post Photo Story – Harvesting profit, displacing lives: The true cost of cheap vegetables appeared first on Untold.

Today, with my political and feminist awareness, I believe that Qandisha, like many powerful women in history, was demonized to be erased from memory. I choose to believe in her existence, envisioning her in her most glorious form. Exploring her figure and legacy represents my effort toward repair, redemption, and reconciliation.

The archetype of the witch: between fascination and demonization

Despite having nearly 20 names based on her attributes and regional variations, Aicha primarily means ‘the living one.’ The origin of Qandisha, as enigmatic as her existence, could stem from Portuguese, referring to her status as a fallen countess (condessa in Portuguese), from Hebrew qadesha meaning sacred prostitute, or from Astarte, the ancient Canaanite mother goddess. 

The founding myth of Qandisha suggests that she was a significant figure in the anti-colonial resistance against Portuguese occupation in the 16th century. While she is scarcely present in contemporary popular culture and artistic productions, Aicha Qandisha’s story continues to be transmitted, though often in a partial and incomplete manner.

In Ahmed Maanouni’s 1981 documentary film Transes, Larbi Batma, leader of the renowned group Nass El Ghiwane, completely refutes the thesis of the jenniya—witch—referring to her as one of the “first rebels in history.” He recounts the massacre in her village near Jorf El Asfar in the province of El Jadida and the rape she allegedly suffered at the hands of a soldier of the occupation. 

This experience supposedly inspired her revenge: her enchanting beauty would become her weapon of war, seducing the colonizers, luring them into the woods, and killing them. In this sequence, archival footage in cutaway shots notably shows Bousbir, the prostitution ghetto of the protectorate in Casablanca, and other testimonies of the brutality of the French armed presence. 

This reflects a clear stance on colonial history and the associated sexual violence—still too sugarcoated —by the director, whose film was restored by Martin Scorsese in 2007. Maanouni speaks of intersectionality ahead of its time, highlighting the exploitation of bodies and the dispossession of land, as well as the interdependence of feminism and decolonization. Aicha Qandisha thus suffered a double penalty: being a woman and being indigenous, objectified and hypersexualized by patriarchy and occupation. 

Numerous variants of this legend exist where Qandisha is alternately a fille de joie, a notable’s daughter, an Andalusian princess, or a Portuguese countess. A controversial character, between the Judeo-Christian succubus and a mermaid, she would use her charms and overflowing sexuality for sinister purposes. With her pale skin, almond-shaped black eyes, and blood-red mouth, she would seduce men to oblivion until they lose their minds. 

Vengeful, misandrist, and insatiable, she would particularly target young men—those she loved or those who did not fulfill their roles as family heads or providers. Some beliefs also consider her the daughter of Sidi Shamharush, sultan of the djinns, regarded as a saint by tribes of the Atlas. Present in the Sufi Buffis order, this version of Aisha jenniya suggests she is capable of possessing people or changing her appearance. 

Whether the massacre of her family by the Portuguese troops was an act of reprisal or the starting point of her resistance is irrelevant: all stories end in a bloodbath and plunge our anti-heroine into madness. Upon her death, she is said to have become a weeping spirit, a llorona, haunting the forest and continuing to hunt men to devour them.

Furthermore, the Portuguese occupation of Morocco coincided with the peak of witch hunts in Europe and the United States. In the context of what is referred to as “the first femicide in history,” which is also the title of a documentary by Dominique Eloudy-Lenys released in 2024, it is plausible that the Portuguese invented the legend of the evil ogress, possibly drawing on other traditions, to destabilize her and dissuade people from rallying with her—or even to hunt her down. 

This legend includes certain characteristics found in Western descriptions of witches: like Maryse Condé’s Tituba, a victim of the Salem witch trials, she would have lived in isolation, near a watercourse, river, or the sea. As a solitary, powerful, and desirable woman, she was seen as a clear danger that needed to be neutralized. 

However, in Gnawa trance ceremonies, or hadra, she is still invoked as Lalla Aicha, honoring her as a holy figure to communicate with spirits. The ambivalence of her character endures, between spells and healing, possession and exorcism, creating a complex relationship of both fear and veneration.

The great forgotten women of history

In the end, very little is known about Aicha Qandisha, and there are no historical sources or written records to define this polymorphic myth. Given that history has predominantly been written from a male perspective, it is clear that many women have been erased from it, and folklore often serves as a simple and effective means to discredit the powerful. 

The earliest known text written and claimed by an author though —the first instance of I—is by a female author, the Mesopotamian princess Enheduanna, who in 2,300 BCE addressed a letter to a goddess. This example, highlighted in Titiou Lecoq’s book Les grandes oubliées: Pourquoi l’Histoire a effacé les femmes, is part of her effort to trace the erasure of women and their contributions throughout history. 

Lecoq’s research suggests that the origins of violence and inequality can be traced back to the Neolithic era with the advent of sedentarization, private property, and agriculture, which reshaped the understanding of fertility. Women thus lost their status as embodiments of the mother goddess and the miracle of life, becoming mere receptacles for seeds. Lecoq’s goal is to shift perspectives, reclaim history, and document the trajectories of remarkable women.

In Morocco, the existence of many significant figures remains debated today, such as Fatima Al-Fihriya, who founded Al Qarawiyine in Fez, the oldest continuously operating university in the world. 

The story of Haddah Zaidia, better known as Cheikha Kharboucha, also remains a mystery. A popular singer regarded as the mother of aita (“the cry” in Moroccan dialect)—a rural musical genre linked to tribal and anti-colonial struggles—legend has it that she was walled up alive by a bloodthirsty caid who was secretly in love with her, outraged by her bold, politically engaged lyrics. While her music endures, her life remains elusive. Surrealist poet André Breton described her as “a ribbon around a bomb.” 

Dihya, a formidable Amazigh warrior of the 7th century, was demonized by her Arab enemies, who called her La Kahina, meaning priestess or prophetess, suggesting that her military prowess was the work of the devil. 

While the destinies of other Moroccan women with extraordinary journeys are better documented and less distorted than Qandisha’s, they remain marginalized. Aside from a few rare biopics—such as those about Zineb Nafzaouia, the 11th-century founder of Marrakech and wife of Almoravid Sultan Youssef Ibn Tachfine, and Fatima Mernissi, a prominent sociologist and Moroccan feminist leader, both of which were incidentally directed by men—female historical figures are seldom recognized in collective consciousness and popular culture. 

There is no Malika El Fassi Avenue, named after the signatory of the independence declaration who secured women’s right to vote, nor an Avenue Sayyida Al Hurra, despite her being a pirate queen allied with Barbarossa. 

Symbolism matters greatly. While some still claim that feminism is a Western import designed to corrupt the virtue of Muslim women, it is clear that Moroccan women have always played a significant role in history and fought for their rights and freedom. Therefore the issue of representation remains more relevant than ever. 

Towards a collective rehabilitation?

It wasn’t until the 1970s in the United States that the archetype of the witch was reimagined as a feminist icon. In 2001, the Massachusetts Assembly passed a law clearing the names of all those condemned during the Salem witch trials. Since then, a wave of official rehabilitations has continued across Europe, supported by activist movements. 

This process of reparation is complemented by efforts to remember, including the erection of monuments and other commemorative tools. In 2016, Pope Francis elevated Mary Magdalene, previously regarded by the Church as a prostitute, to the status of “apostle of the apostles” by dedicating a liturgical feast in her honor. 

Two years later, Garth Davis’ film Mary Magdalene portrayed a character – played by Rooney Mara – imbued with gentleness, wisdom and humanity, while demonstrating a form of independence and rejection of the patriarchal model and motherhood. The same year in France, the figure of the witch saw a resurgence in popularity, notably influenced by Mona Chollet’s essay Sorcières: La puissance invaincue des femmes.

Pioneer Moroccan journalist Fedwa Misk launched the participatory feminist webzine Qandisha back in 2011. Accused of turning women against men, she nevertheless offered a platform to men in the interest of inclusivity. 

Few cultural projects capture the emancipatory significance of Qandisha’s character. Two eponymous films, released in 2010 and 2020 respectively and directed by men, use the most terrifying aspects of the myth to exaggerate the story and turn it into thrillers. However, cinema has a significant role to play in shaping our collective imagination. 

Director Yasmine Benkirane understands this well. In her debut feminist feature film Reines, released in 2022, the figure of Aicha Qandisha, though sometimes approached with a forced mystical angle, becomes the queen of the djins and acts as a benevolent presence to guide the young heroine on her initiatory journey. 

In an interview with the Sorociné website, the director explains her desire to “reclaim Qandisha and make her a symbol of feminine revolt, just as European women have reclaimed the figure of the witch.”

And she probably holds one of the keys: the reappropriation of women’s stories by women. To recognize oneself in them, to honor them. What if we were all somehow the heiresses of these lineages of demonized women, as suggested by some contemporary feminist movements? 

Somehow, I am myself the archetype of the modern witch: I heal myself with plants, I am sensitive to moon phases, I communicate with animals… and I wonder if it might be up to my generation to break the cycle of these transgenerational violences to re-sacralize the power of the feminine. 

If one is not born a feminist but becomes one, through the force of circumstances and the brutality of the world, then I believe it is also up to us to create our own mythology, to know our references, to identify with our heroines, and celebrate our saints. Qandisha, for her part, still struggles to find a narrative that recognizes her as the symbol of resistance she surely was, and what remains of her story will only ever be what we choose to make of it.

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For nationalist pride, Asturias is the ‘cradle of Spain’, a land of old Christians never trodden by the Muslim invaders. Perhaps that is why most Asturians, and visitors too, are unaware that in the West of the region, a few kilometers from the town of Luarca and at the foot of the Camino de Santiago, stands a Muslim cemetery with Arab tiles and a horseshoe arch. With no information sign to help visitors get over their astonishment, this Moorish cemetery in Barcia in a semi-ruinous state, appears in the middle of a forest and just a few meters from the coast. 

There are more unknowns than certainties about this necropolis. It is not even known how many people are buried there but it is estimated  to be between 100 and 300 Rifian Muslims from Melilla and other areas of the former Spanish protectorate in Morocco. They were part of the Grupos de Regulares de Melilla, a unit of indigenous troops founded in 1911 and recruited by Fransisco Franco’s army to fight in the Spanish civil war (1936-9). 

“One of the great icons of Republican war propaganda was that of the invading Moor, which would be a kind of return of the invaders of 711,” explains Xosé Manuel Núñez Seixas, a historian and author of “Sites of the Dictators. Memories of Authoritarian Europe, 1945–2020”. 

Francesc Tur who wrote the book “The Invisible War. Moors, African Americans and Gypsies in the Civil War” agrees: “In the Republican press there was a great demonisation of the Arab, who was treated as if he were a savage, a beast who came to rape Spanish women.”

In October 1936, at the beginning of the war, several units of Moroccan soldiers from Ceuta, Melilla, Tetuan and Larache landed in Galicia. Franco’s coup d’état had triumphed in Galicia, but not in Asturias, a region with a working-class and leftist tradition. In fact, many of the soldiers who organized the 1936 coup d’état that brought Franco to power were part of the so-called “Africanists”, Spanish soldiers with experience in combat and repression in the Spanish colonies in Morocco. 

Two years earlier, Asturian miners had staged the October 1934 revolution, creating an ephemeral Asturian Socialist Republic that was harshly repressed by the Republican army in a matter of weeks. It is estimated that 2,000 people were killed by Africanist soldiers and regular Moorish troops, according to historians such as Gabriel Jackson or Julian Casanova, although other historians give higher figures. 

The cruelty of these soldiers caused such terror among the Asturian population that a stereotype about the malignity of the Moors began to incubate, opportunely used as a weapon of psychological warfare by the Francoist side, and fed by centuries of legends and popular songs related to the battle of Covadonga. 

Aurelio del Llano, one of the best known Asturian folklorists, heard in 1920 a shepherdess reciting the ‘Romance de la cristiana cautiva’: “Caballero yo no soy mora,/ soy cristiana cautiva, me cautivaron los moros/ siendo niña chiquitita” ( Gentleman, I am not a Moor, I am a Christian captive, I was taken captive by the Moors when I was a little girl). In the last days of the revolution of 1934 revolutionary socialist leader Belarmino Tomás wrote about the Moroccan military saying that “their behavior is not worthy of any civilized nation.”

This was the reason why the military coup plotters chose these troops to march from Galicia to Oviedo, the Asturian capital where Coronel Antonio Aranda, leader of the coup d’état in the region, was holding out in a city besieged by the Republicans. During the advance towards Oviedo, the town of Luarca – some 90 km to the West – became the nerve center of the national rearguard, and home to the military government of the area. The bloodiest battles took place on the slopes of Mount Naranco, in the outskirts of Oviedo, where the Moorish soldiers died by the hundreds. “Being an elite corps and serving in the vanguard,” explains José Manuel Rena, a resident of Barcia and retired history teacher, “they were in the front lines, and there was real carnage.’’

Indigenous troops, cannon fodder

The main reason these Moroccan soldiers enlisted to participate in a foreign war was the pay they received, “about four pesetas a day, a good wage for ordinary people,” as Stanley G. Payne has written in ‘40 fundamental questions about the Spanish civil war’. There were also benefits for their families in case they died in combat. 

Beyond economic reasons, Payne also argues that some of these austere Rifian shepherds and peasants had been convinced by Franco’s nationalist, Catholic and reactionary ideology that the war being waged in Spain was against atheists and enemies of religion. According to him, these young Moroccans were attracted to “appeals that emphasized the almost jihadist values underlying the fight against ‘red atheism’ and ‘godlessness’, so the volunteers were left in no doubt that they were fighting truly evil people.” 

Consistent with this shared religious faith, the Muslim soldiers integrated into Franco’s army were provided with personnel and infrastructure to meet their needs. A theater was set up in Luarca as barracks for the Moroccan troops, who were always accompanied by imams and faqihs, experts on Muslim law who were in charge of burials according to the Islamic rite. And it is believed that it was precisely one of these faqihs who directed the construction of the Barcia cemetery in the autumn of 1936, using both voluntary and forced local labor.

It is a striking ideological role reversal: while the Republican, enlightened and cosmopolitan left spread a brutal and savage image of the Moors, the philo-fascist right resorted in its propaganda to the Moor “as a symbol that was part of the image of Franco as an Africanist warlord,” as Pablo León Gasalla, Director General of Culture and Heritage of the Principality of Asturias, explains, intellectuals and propagandists on Franco’s side celebrated the unity of the Spanish and Moroccan people in their struggle in defense of traditional civilisation. However, behind the rhetoric, the reality was quite different. “Moroccan soldiers were used as cannon fodder on the front line,” León Gasalla explains.

Ruin and abandonment

The Moorish cemetery of Barcia, the only vestige of Islamic architecture in Asturias, occupies a total area of 4,500 m² in two distinct parts. On the one hand, the burial area, rectangular in shape and with guard towers at its four corners, is accessed by passing under the horseshoe arch, once covered by a wooden door more than two meters high. In front of it, a mosque began to be built, intended for washing and wrapping the corpses according to the Muslim rite, but it was never completed.

“There was an imam called Omar,” recalls Rena, a resident of the village of Barcia, “who, after the war was over, came every year to clean and look after the cemetery. He died around 1970 and never came back.” Since then the undergrowth has grown until the graves are indistinguishable. Sections of the wall have fallen down and the watchtowers are full of rubbish. 

“The first time I went, I was 13 or so, around 1979,” recalls historian Núñez Seixas, “it had a certain air of mystery about it. Then I went back as an adult, with my wife, and it was a mess. It’s a half-clandestine place.”

The village of Barcia, a municipality of 579 inhabitants, is the entity that owns and is responsible for the cemetery. Ricardo García Parrondo was its president between 2007 and 2023, he recalls: “When I joined, we cleaned it up, because it was an absolute scrubland. We tried to keep it that way. We would have liked to clean up the place more, but we have a very low budget and we can’t afford it, because it’s a complicated job. We’ve been trying for years and knocking on the doors of all the official bodies.”

Ismael González, councilor for tourism in the Valdés town council, where the necropolis of Barcia is located, does not hide the fact that this space “is not among the priorities for action in terms of either heritage rehabilitation or tourist use,” and that therefore a municipal intervention to rescue the cemetery from the ruin to which it seems doomed is ruled out. The cemetery has been part of the Cultural Heritage Inventory of Asturias since 2012, which opens the door to receiving grants for its rehabilitation.

However, according to León Gasalla, the region’s director of heritage, “no aid has been requested,” which is indicative of the lack of interest in a space that does not fit into the usual categories of historical memory in Spain. It is not very clear what consideration this cemetery would have in the recently approved Law of Democratic Memory, which contemplates the removal or elimination of those “buildings, constructions, shields, insignias, plaques and any other elements or objects attached to public buildings or located on public roads in which commemorative mentions are made in exaltation, personal or collective, of the military uprising and the Dictatorship.”

In recent months there has been a heated public debate in Spain over the “Pyramid of the Italians”, a funerary shrine housing the bodies of Italian soldiers sent by Mussolini to fight in the Spanish civil war. The autonomous government of Castilla y León, presided over by the liberal-conservative Popular Party in coalition with the far-right Vox, has just ordered the protection of the monument in order to avoid what they consider a “rewriting of history” resulting from the approval of the aforementioned law. Both the Moorish cemetery of Barcia and the Pyramid of the Italians were built to bury fallen soldiers fighting on the side of the coup, but there is a fundamental difference between the two: the former is a simple cemetery, and the latter was conceived as a shrine exalting fascist ideology.

So far there has only been one attempt to restore the cemetery. It was an initiative of the autonomous city of Melilla on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Cuerpo de Regulares, the unit of indigenous troops based in Melilla. García Parrondo says that he had conversations with the councilor of Melilla, and that in 2011 a plan was drawn up, budgeted at EUR 200,000, for its comprehensive rehabilitation. But those were the years of the economic crisis, and the project was discarded due to its high cost.

This disdain for the Moorish cemetery of Barcia is not exclusive to the administrations. “A small sign was put up and covered with graffiti,” recalls García Parrondo, “because there are people who understand that those who are there fought against their families, and we have to go against them no matter what.”

Núñez Seixas, on the other hand, finds a curious contrast with other cemeteries of soldiers allied to Franco’s side, such as the Italian military tabernacle in Zaragoza. “I would add that Morocco’s lack of interest, and probably lack of means, is also clear: it would be remembering the fighters for the colonizer, after all,” he explains.

Nobody remembers the Moorish soldiers

The Barcia cemetery occupies an elusive place that is difficult to classify in the collective memory. “The problem with the Moors of the civil war,” García Parrondo thinks, “is that the winning side did not treat them well, and the losing side never wanted them. When the war ended, they were left in limbo.” 

Núñez Seixas agrees that it is an “unwanted and rather uncomfortable memory. There is a double rejection, as the winning side recognises that there were mercenary and non-Christian troops in their ranks, and the memorialist movement is shocked to preserve the space as a burial place for another confession.”

León Gasalla also believes that this is “a very painful part of the past, which is conflictive and controversial.” But one way of dealing with it would be to maintain the cemetery and try to contextualize and explain why it is there. “Issues that have to do with the dead are delicate,” adds Núñez Seixas, “and in western Asturias there were quite a few executions. The memory of the Moors is very negative in the popular memory of Asturias because of their role in the repression but, on the other hand, they were mostly people recruited half by force. They could be seen partly as victims. So, what recognition should we give them?”

For García Parrondo, the ideal would be to recover the place as “a place of historical memory, to remind young people of what happened. And for it not to happen again.”

Nuñez Seixas agrees that “it should be possible for the authorities to re-signify it intelligently, without claiming the participation of Moroccan troops in the war, but rather explaining it. They are probably afraid of controversy, but it could be an interesting place for cultural tourism. It would have to be tidied up, redefined and investigated. And, if someone wants to perform a funerary cult, it should be possible.”

For years, the Muslim community in Asturias, made up of around 9000 people, has been asking to be able to use the necropolis, offering to take charge of the rehabilitation and maintenance of the space. They are asking to use it as a burial place for Muslims from Asturias, Galicia, Cantabria and León. “In the whole of Asturias we have only one plot in the Oviedo cemetery, and it is almost full,” says Yahya Zanabili, a retired Syrian doctor who came to Spain in 1970 and is the delegate of the Islamic Commission in Asturias. “Besides, the graves are not all oriented towards Mecca. As Spanish citizens we have the right to be buried according to our religious beliefs, and in Asturias this is not guaranteed.” The Muslim cemetery in Seville, also built during the civil war, was later rehabilitated and handed over to the Muslim community as a burial place.

In recent decades, the use of the Barcia cemetery has been very different. According to Rena, the resident of Barcia, there were neighbors who took the stones from the unfinished mosque to use them as foundations for their own houses. While we were visiting the cemetery, a neighbor who was passing by told us that a section of the wall was pulled down so that carts loaded with firewood from the pine trees planted inside the enclosure could be taken out. Rena sums it up in one word: “A pillage.”

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