The Colombian exiles seeking refuge in Spain

The number of Colombian refugees seeking asylum in Spain has exploded from fewer than 700 in 2016 to nearly 28,000 in 2020. Some of them share their stories.

Mateo Gutierrez, 24, was charged by the Colombian General Prosecution Office with being involved in a series of in Bogotá between 2015 and 2017. He spent 21 months in Bogotá prisons. He was declared innocent in 2018 in his first trial and freed. Five days later, however, he fled to Spain, fearing that the authorities might try to find something else to charge him with. Ana*, 38, vividly remembers the black-and-white tennis shoes of one of the men who held her and her family at gun point in their home as they searched for her father to kill him. It was 2001, and she was 18. It was not the first assassination attempt against him. For decades, Colombia has been immersed in civil war, with leftist guerilla groups – the largest of which was the FARC – on one side and the state and the AUC (United Self-Defence), an umbrella organisation for different right-wing paramilitary groups, on the other.