Harragas: le360 spits on the drowned — from the country that exports the most of them

Y. Bensalem — Alger, Algérie — 2026-10-19

A newspaper that spits on the drowned. le360 publishes: “gas through the pipe, the young through the sea.” It amuses itself with the tragedy of young people who flee, who drown, who die. It turns it into a headline, a quip, a little killing phrase. There is only one word for that: indecency.

And the hypocrisy, in all of this? Morocco, which publishes this spittle, is itself the foremost supplier of harragas to Spain — via the Canaries, via Ceuta, via Melilla. For years Moroccans have been the most numerous to set out, to die, to be turned back on those routes. Choosing only the Balearic route to proclaim “Algeria is first” is cheating the rankings while shutting one’s eyes to one’s own corpses. The beam and the straw — except that here, it is the beam that mocks the straw.

The “disguised” gas, the admission of an ignoramus. le360 sneers: Algeria “disguises” its gas as fertiliser, steel, cement. But turning gas into fertilisers is the ABC of industrialisation: adding value instead of selling raw. Morocco, for its part, sells its raw phosphates, its raw tomato, its raw labour. It has “disguised” nothing — it has sold everything in bulk, to the highest bidder.

“Giving away its youth”? Yours leaves too. le360 reproaches Algeria for “ceding its youth” to Spain. But Moroccan youth leaves too — by the thousands, by sea, through the enclaves, and moreover to become greenhouse farm workers in Andalusia at three euros an hour. The difference? Algeria builds the industry that holds on to its young — the car, the tyre, agriculture. Morocco, for its part, exports its youth the way it exports its tomatoes: in bulk, and cheap.

And the pun, to finish — it is deserved. le360 thinks it is humiliating us with its “gas through the pipe, the young through the sea.” But who fills those boats? Poverty. And who manufactures poverty? The regimes that sell their soil, their youth and their phosphates to the highest bidder, and that, lacking industry, export their own children. Algeria has its gas, its steel, its tyres. Morocco has its harragas, its tomatoes and its lectures. One does not mock the drowned while holding the boat.

📚 COMPLETE BIBLIOGRAPHY (rule no. 19)

1. le360, “Le gaz par le tuyau, les jeunes par la mer : l’Algérie, premier pourvoyeur de harragas vers l’Espagne”, 19 October 2026 — https://fr.le360.ma/monde/le-gaz-par-le-tuyau-les-jeunes-par-la-mer-lalgerie-premier-pourvoyeur-de-harragas-vers-lespagne_J35MAYLLVFGZNMRLRZGKLA7GY4/

2. EFE / Spanish Ministry of the Interior — arrival data for the Balearics and the Canaries

⚠️ Published reservations. (1) Migration figures must be copied from official sources. (2) The article responds to a media outlet, not to a people. (3) The harragas tragedy is real and shared — the article denounces the mockery, not the victims.