The Diplomat
An Air Force A400M aircraft arrived late yesterday afternoon at Torrejón air base, carrying 110 Afghans who had been picked up from Kabul airport in the morning. The plane first arrived in Dubai and, shortly afterwards, flew to Spain.
As Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares explained in statements to the media, the plane carried three entire families of Afghan embassy staff and the captain of the Paralympic basketball team, Nilofar Bayat, who has already been offered a place in the Spanish basketball team by several Spanish clubs. The young woman is a law student and a worker for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
Upon the plane’s arrival, the Minister of the Presidency, Relations with Parliament and Democratic Memory, Félix Bolaños, was at the air base.
This is the second flight sent by the government to evacuate Spaniards and Afghan collaborators, in addition to the first, in which 53 people travelled, including five Spaniards, and which arrived in the early hours of Thursday morning.
Like the first Afghans to arrive in Spain, the occupants of the second flight underwent a health check and identification process before being taken to the facilities set up at the same base in Torrejón, awaiting transfer to different parts of Spain.
The government hopes to be able to bring around 800 Afghans who collaborated with Spanish troops and aid workers or with other European countries back to our country, although it insists that it is very difficult to give even approximate figures, given the difficulties involved in getting to Kabul airport.
In fact, yesterday the Minister of Defence, Margarita Robles, said that one of the evacuees lost a daughter in an avalanche, so she missed the plane and is still waiting to be able to leave Kabul.
Both the ambassador, Gabriel Ferrán, and his deputy, Paula Sánchez, and the 17 members of the National Police Corps who were providing security for the Spanish Embassy, and who are now coordinating with the US forces to facilitate the arrival of the Afghans they wish to evacuate to the planes, are still at the airport. Albares, who praised the “extraordinary work” being done by the ambassador, announced that two more diplomats will be sent to Afghanistan to reinforce the operation to bring in the Afghan collaborators.
Meanwhile, Moncloa announced yesterday that the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, will visit the Torrejón facilities today, where other Afghans are also being brought in on planes chartered by the European External Action Service (SEAEX) to be distributed in different European cities, after Spain offered to act as a hub for this operation. Yesterday a plane landed via Paris, with 38 Afghans and their families, joining the 36 who landed on Wednesday, via Rome.
Sánchez is scheduled to make the visit together with the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyene, and the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell.
The visit was described yesterday as a “propaganda operation” by the PP, whose Secretary for International Affairs, Valentina Martínez Ferro, told Europa Press that it is also a “new operation to whitewash ineptitude”.
Martínez Ferro, who reproached the President of the Government for having kept his holidays until yesterday and not appearing to give explanations, indicated that Sánchez “does not dare to appear alone before Spanish public opinion and has to do so shielded”.
The MP criticised the “days of chaos and lack of clarity” on the part of the government that have taken place, with successive ministers talking about the evacuation plan and without it being clear “who in the government is in charge, recalling that the heads of the Presidency, Interior, Inclusion and finally, yesterday, the Foreign Affairs Minister, have been speaking successively.
