They filed on to the football pitch as applause rang out, punctuated by shouts of bienvenidos. Their improbable journey had begun months earlier and about 3,000km away; now the asylum seekers, many from Mali, were being heartily greeted by the residents of a small town in the Spanish region of Galicia.
In late August the municipality of Monterroso, population 3,600, began to hear rumblings that they would host 120 people who had fled violence and political instability. After risking one of the world’s deadliest migration routes to arrive in Spain’s Canary Islands, they were being transferred to the mainland.
