The cruise liner MSC Armonia arrived on Saturday April 6 in Messina, Sicily, after spending three days in the port of Barcelona. The stopover was scheduled for half a day, but an unexpected event forced the approximately 1,500 passengers to extend their stay in Catalonia.
Spanish customs found that 69 travelers (including 14 minors), all of Bolivian nationality, did not hold a Schengen visa. Their country is one of four in Latin America (with Ecuador, Guyana and Suriname) not to be exempt from this process. Nationals of other states in the region can enter Europe with a valid passport.
Fake visas stamped in the passport
Spanish authorities believe they are dealing with a case of illegal immigration, and have criticized the Italian company MSC for not having checked the validity of the travel documents of passengers departing from the port of Santos, Brazil, on March 19 . The necessity or not of a Schengen visa, depending on the country of origin, is however clearly explained on the MSC website. The Schengen area brings together 27 European countries, including 23 EU members.
Members of the travelers’ families, however, gave another version in the Bolivian press. According to them, the passengers thought they were in good standing and were victims of a scam. This is partly confirmed by the Bolivian Association of Travel Agents (Abavyt), which denounced the existence of false visas. “We note that it is common for a person, instead of completing the legal procedures, to try to obtain a visa quickly. She receives a false stamp in her passport, which leads to serious consequences. estimated the president of the association in everyday life El Diario.
Quoted by the newspaper, the daughter of one of the passengers points out, however, that her mother was able to disembark in Spanish territory during previous stopovers, in Tenerife in the Canary Islands and in Malaga. In both cases, the deception appears to have gone undetected.
#mscarmonia Despite announcing we are going, the stevedores have attached more ropes and now driven off. They are the only people who can detach us from what’s. So we are still going nowhere. Police out in force.
— gingerbread (@gingerb71214461) April 4, 2024
All the passengers were confined on the boat for several hours on Tuesday, while the number of non-compliant visas was counted. Some expressed their anger on social media. “At least the nightclub stayed open,” one of them consoled.
Repatriation by plane
The 69 Bolivians were gathered in a transit zone, after notification of the ban on entering Spain. According to the Catalan regional government, those returned were able to submit asylum applications if they wished, in accordance with the law. Without much chance of success since Bolivia is not considered a country where human rights are violated. The group is accommodated in another MSC boat, which arrived on Thursday from Livorno, awaiting repatriation by plane, on an unknown date. The cruise line will pay the return shipping costs.
In a press release sent to the EFE news agency, the Bolivia Spain Cooperation Association (Acobe) expresses its solidarity with those returned and asks travel agencies in Bolivia to “scrupulously respect international standards”. Acobe, created in Spain in 2004, also makes the link between cruising and the desire to leave the country: “Migration is sometimes the only option to improve one’s quality of life and one’s future,” believes the collective.
The price of the cruise, according to the MSC website, is between 800 and several thousand euros excluding taxes (full board), depending on the quality of the cabin chosen. The company will have to pay compensation to passengers due to the cancellation of stopovers planned in Ajaccio, Dubrovnik and Corfu. From Messina, Armonia will go directly to Venice, the last stop of the cruise. According to CNN, some 300 Brazilians wanted to be flown to Rome on April 5, at MSC’s expense, from where they must return to their country.
