The Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, recently read in parliament a newspaper article from Venezuela about a battered boat that had just arrived on the coast of the South American country with 106 migrants onboard. “The undocumented migrants arrested, among them 10 women and a four-year-old girl, were in terrible condition. The 19-metre boat’s hold emitted an insufferable odour,” he quoted the article as saying.

“This news story could have been published last week, and the migrants could have been Nigerian, Senegalese or Moroccan,” said Sánchez. “In reality, it appeared in a Venezuelan daily on 25 May 1949, and its protagonists were Spaniards, 106 of the 120,000 who crossed [the Atlantic] between 1945 and 1978 to escape misery and Franco’s dictatorship.”

Sánchez emphasised that more than 2 million people fled Spain during the Franco regime, with about half of them entering other countries irregularly. Many emigrated from the Canary Islands, which is today the main destination for migrants arriving in small boats to Spain. “When we talk about migrations, you must always remember Spain is a country of migrants,” he said. “We Spaniards are the children of migrants, we are not going to be the parents of xenophobia.”

Sánchez delivered a strong defence of migration for both humanitarian and economic reasons. It was a rare moment in Spain’s parliament. Migration has not been a prominent or deeply partisan issue in Spain’s national arena until........

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