Enrique Ojeda

Enrique Ojeda, Director of the Fundación Tres Culturas del Mediterráneo

What is the experience of your country in managing diversity?

Well that’s a very good question for Spain. You know that Spain has been for quite a long time a non-diverse country. Only very recently and very fast they have become a diverse country. Actually 20 years ago we were a migrating country. Spaniards were going overseas to Latin America or to Europe to find a better place to live and to work and only in the last 15-10 years we have received people from America and from European countries. So we have become a diverse society and it’s been very, very quick. Actually Spain has undergone a very fast and very quick modernization from dictatorship to democracy, first in the 70’s and 80’s and then in the 90’s from a more or less unified society to a diverse and heterogeneous society.

And I think Spain has done quite well. I’m not sure it has been 100 percent because of well planned strategies and policies, but the fact is that it’s working. So far it’s working pretty well. Now last estimates is set at around 12-13% of the population is foreign population. We have almost 1 million Moroccans in Spain, meaning that there are almost 1 million Muslims in Spain. Ten years ago it was only 80,000 people.

So, now we have to face very important challenges and we, Spaniards I say we, must know how to deal with this issue, which is quite a new issue for us. I think the need to fully integrate this community, this new arrived foreign community in Spain will be one of the key issues for Spain in the beginning of this 21st century.

What would you say are the main challenges for democracy today?

Well, I think we have seen those main challenges. We have been witnessing them in other countries, France, Belgium to put only a few examples. We can legally and politically integrate foreign communities first. That’s not such a big issue for western democracy. The problem is the real integration, the social integration, the urban integration, the schooling, making those immigrants part of our society not only having them enjoying the rights that they have received so far in our society, but also their duties, because performing their duties is how they become full citizens.

I think that is one of the key issues. We must not just say okay we establish legal and political texts or policies that put them on an equal place. We have to go farther and beyond that and have them fully integrated, they have to know and be fully aware that they are citizens as the ones that were born in Spain. And as I said before, they don’t only have rights but they also have duties and they have to perform those duties. It’s through that, performing their duties, that they can become full citizens.

Phone interview with Mr Enrique Ojeda, Director of the Fundación Tres Culturas del Mediterráneo, 29 May 2007.
Interviewer: Bénédicte Walter, International IDEA’s Acting Head of Communications.