Anti-immigrant feeling persists in El Ejido

Fires that destroyed the homes of North African farmworkers were long out by Wednesday and the angry cries of “Out with the Moors!” were quiet. But the passions that fuelled three days of anti-immigrant violence in this small southern Spanish town - 55 people were injured and 23 arrested in the chaos still burned. “Taking to the streets was the only recourse,” said Juan Amate Lopez, 52, a Spaniard whose face turned red as he angrily ticked off a list of crimes - rape, robbery, murder that he blamed on immigrant workers. “There is no racism here,” he said, repeating a favourite refrain of some residents. Long-simmering tensions between the Spanish-born and foreign labourers erupted in El Ejido on Saturday after the stabbing to death of a 26-year-old Spanish woman, blamed on a Moroccan man. Emotions had been running high in El Ejido since the killings of two local farmers a fornight earlier. A Moroccan was arrested as the main suspect.