At 18, a Moroccan is forced to survive on the streets in Spain

After being chased like a “dog” from a reception center for unaccompanied minors, an 18-year-old Moroccan man is forced to sleep on the street.

From Morocco to Spain, the chaotic journey of Abdellatif Bouhlal. At the age of 15, he made a perilous sea journey from the kingdom on a makeshift boat, to return to the Iberian Peninsula. Upon his arrival, he was placed in a reception center for unaccompanied minors. He would spend three years there. When he reached the age of 18, he was forced to leave the center, and find his own accommodation. “The very day I turned 18, they threw me out on the street like a dog,” he told Reuters Bouhlal from a makeshift tent on El Cabron beach in the town of Arinaga. Since then, he has had no other option than sleeping on the streets and begging to survive. According to his explanations, the authorities are slow to process the documents he needs as a foreigner to be able to work in Spain.