Spain's plans to fight illegal immigration with spy networks carry echo of Franco

Spain's interior Ministry plans to recruit ordinary civilians into a network of snoopers to denounce suspected illegal immigrants to the police.

Opposition politicians have condemned the scheme, announced this week, as "absurd" and "doomed to failure".

The ministry wants to create "a network of alert and social denunciation" in which individuals and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) will be urged to participate. Neighbourhood watch committees would "detect new cases of irregular immigrants" and hand over details of those without identity papers to the authorities. The proposed "alert network" carries uncomfortable echoes of Franco's dictatorship, when Spaniards went in terror of being denounced by soplones, or police spies.

Ministry sources say the scheme to "fight illegal immigration" was approved at the request of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). The NGO's boss, Brunson McKinley, signed the plan with the government's immigration advisor, Jaime Ignacio Gonzalez, on Tuesday.

Consuelo Rumi, the opposition Socialists' immigration spokeswoman, has tabled 15 parliamentary questions about the move, one of which is whether "such networks have any precedent in democratic countries?" Ms Rumi said: "My party has condemned similar activities in other countries. We don't like such practices for political dissidents or for immigrants. The government gives the impression of trying to contract an organisation to do the job it should be doing itself."

Carles Campuzano, a spokesman for the Catalan Nationalist Convergence and Union (CiU) party, called for Mr Gonzalez to explain the plan in parliament and called it absurd and "doomed to failure". The CiU has also put down a battery of questions over the scope of the deal with the IOM.

Statistics show there are about 500,000 illegal immigrants in Spain but officials reckon there could be twice as many. As well as deporting illegal immigrants, the plan also seeks to finance voluntary repatriation by taking money from a Labour Ministry body best known for organising cheap holidays for the elderly.

The United Left party criticised the plan for intensifying harassment of immigrants. "The government offers nothing but repressive measures to half a million immigrants," it said.