"Torre Pacheco"...when an isolated incident became fuel for the far-right's war on immigrants and Pedro Sanchez
Dr. Abdullah Bousouf
Written by: Dr. Abdullah Boussouf (Historian, Secretary General of the Council of the Moroccan Community Abroad)
The municipality of Torre Pacheco in the province of Murcia, southern Spain, experienced four difficult days (July 2025), marked by public anger and unjustified violence by followers of the far-right Vox party, following an attack by some young Moroccans on a 68-year-old retired man. This is a completely unacceptable act that requires a judicial investigation and deterrent legal penalties.
But what we experienced was the opening of media investigations and follow-ups filled with hatred and racism by the far-right media, its networks, and its bloggers on social media. Some Spanish media outlets even admitted that many of the media materials were not real and some were outdated. Distorting reality is one of the far-right's patents.
However, it is necessary to recall that the mayor of Torre Pacheco (from the right-wing Popular Party) first organized a protest march, and then the extreme right (VOX) elements from nearby cities such as Almería and Alicante joined in, inciting street violence, bullying, and burning shops and cars of immigrants of Moroccan origin.
These details bring the far-right and immigration back to the table for discussion, laying bare the intense ideological and political conflict between the far-right on the one hand, and the movement for coexistence and multicultural and multireligious societies on the other. Many episodes of the Torre Pacheco incident seemed designed to revive the same racist conflict against foreigners, cloaked in the preserving of European culture and the European demographic structure.
In conclusion, we can say that the political and media exploitation of the Torre Pacheco incident was intended to bring down the government of Pedro Sanchez and announce early legislative elections. However, this is just one of the rounds of conflict since 2018, during which time there were regular and early legislative elections, which Pedro Sanchez won, forcing his opponents to fall from the leadership of their parties.
While right-wing and far-right parties have made immigration a political theme and an electoral platform, demonizing immigrants and calling for restrictions on them. Recently, the Vox party called for the mass expulsion of eight million immigrants, Sanchez has declared an open-door policy and facilitated the legalization of immigrants, unlike some European countries. He recently announced a law to legalize the status of approximately 500,000 immigrants, and has made immigration and clean energy his winning horse.
Thus, the events in Torre Pacheco are just the tip of the iceberg of racist far-right activity, which has enlisted the services of Hungarian banks to finance its election campaigns, in clear violation of the ban on Spanish parties receiving foreign funding. It has also used racist media and social media to derail Pedro Sánchez's government, without any red lines or moral ceiling.
Santiago Abascal has not neglected the issue of corruption, influence peddling, and individual missteps. He has thus mobilized the far-right's media machine following the scandal involving Santos Cerdan, a close associate of Pedro Sánchez, last June. Cerdan was involved in administrative corruption and million-dollar bribes, forcing Santos to resign. Sánchez appeared in a video apologizing to citizens and promising to open an investigation into the party's finances.
It's inconceivable to discuss the Spanish far-right, Vox, without mentioning the alliance of far-right parties across Europe, whether in Italy, Austria, Hungary, or elsewhere, and their efforts to coordinate on immigration and asylum within European decision-making institutions. Therefore, for them, the battle is existential, contingent on the accumulation of individual errors or miscalculations of public policies by their opponents, in order to expand their influence within their societies and gain more electoral support.
But the numbers tell a different story. Pedro Sánchez's government has achieved unprecedented results, reducing unemployment from 11.8 to 10.6 in 2024, and has become one of the most advanced economies. The British magazine The Economist even named Spain "Economy of the Year" for 2024. This is the result of governmental choices, especially since Sánchez stated that "Spain must choose between being an open and advanced country, or a closed and poor one."
It was observed that of the 468,000 new jobs created in 2024, immigrants accounted for approximately 851,000 jobs in the agriculture, construction, and services sectors. For its part, the Bank of Spain stated that immigrants contributed 201,000 to the gross domestic product, and that Spain plans to welcome 25 million new immigrants over the next 30 years.
Pedro Sánchez's government achieved 96 million tourists in 2024, a 101% increase over 2023, leaving 126 billion euros in Spanish coffers. Undoubtedly, immigrants have also contributed to this achievement.
Another major achievement is related to the energy transition and the Sánchez government's solar energy policies. In 2024, Spain was able to produce approximately 561 TP3T of its domestic energy and electricity needs, benefiting households and businesses.
Thus, it appears from this simple overview of some of the strengths of the Sánchez government's policies of openness to immigration and migrants, and the economic, demographic, and social gains it has achieved, that the Spanish far right lacks an economic vision or a societal project beyond immigration, asylum, and sovereign borders. This tangible confirmation of Sánchez's victory in all legislative elections. This deficit pushes Vox to adopt hate speech, racism, and hostility toward migrants, after the Torre Pacheco incident, for example. This town of 40,000 people, 321 of whom are migrants working in agriculture, under the scorching sun and inside greenhouses.
When we see so many videos today about excessive violence and rioting by the thugs of the Vox party, we recall the American movie “A Day Without Mexicans” and wonder, in turn, what if Moroccan immigrants hadn’t worked in the fields of Torre Pacheco, Murcia, and elsewhere…?
We believe that what is required by all this organized media hype is leftist Pedro Sanchez, his strong personality, and his choices in Europe and the hotbeds of conflict around the world.
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