I read a Spanish news piece today about an Ex Director of a Russian Chocolate Company, who is one of the forces behind the Adeje based Oberig association which supports the nearly 2,000 Ukrainians living in Tenerife. He seems like a good guy.
His grandmother was one of the “niñ@s de Moscú” : the 2,895 children evacuated to the Soviet Union by the Republican authorities during the Spanish Civil war. He told the Diario de Avisos newspaper, (who were at pains to point out that he is a Russian passport holder), “all Russian speakers in Tenerife are against the invasion (of Ukraine) decreed by Putin”
I also deplore the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but in this particular article I was struck by the reporter’s use of the phrase “Russian passport holder” – not Russian national, or just Russian, but emphasising the (one quarter Spanish) man’s passport.
Passports have been with us for a long while! A type of passport was first issued in the reign of Henry V of England in 1540. By 1920 the League of Nations had introduced a worldwide passport standard, mainly as a means to identify the hoards who were looking for a better life in the United States and in recent years passports have become a sought-after commodity.
Today there is a black market for stolen and fake passports, while some countries legally hand over citizenship to the highest bidder. There is even a website to rank passports.
As a baby boomer card-carrying Trekkie I had really hoped the world would be contemplating joining the United Federation of Planets by now, and instead my country of origin has seceded from the European Union in part, the politicians would have us believe, to enable them to have a blue (which turned out to be almost black) passport.
Historically regional blood lines have blurred since Roman times and before, but Romans did not carry around ID cards to prove their Roman citizenship. What proved a person’s citizenship was first and foremost the person’s family, contacts and position in society. Despite the fact that modern human beings constantly intermarry and intermingle, the status of any particular group in society is controlled by the group that has the greatest economic and political power: History is always written by the victor.
Today National Governments, and indeed many ordinary individuals still promote the idea of “Otherness” and here we are in 2022 and the UNHCR estimates there are many millions of displaced, stateless and therefore passport-less people globally – of which approximately one third are children. The Russian invasion of Ukraine will displace millions more, but there is some consolation in the fact that there are still “good guys” in the world who are holding out the hand of friendship to them.
I consider myself to be a European, I am a Spanish resident, I am proud of the stance Spain has taken to allow around 100,000 Ukrainian residents to live & work legally in this country, with guaranteed access to education, health & social provision like any other Spanish citizen. But even though I love my adopted home I can’t quite bring myself to give up my British nationality; I am still “Other” and I’m honestly not sure why that is.
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