After covering a distance of 1,108 kilometers on a trip of more than one day, the driver, with long experience at the wheel, stopped the truck at the loading dock of a transport and logistics company of the industrial estate of Celrà , Wednesday afternoon. It came from Rovigo, a city of 50,000 inhabitants halfway between Venice and Bologna, in the northeast of Italy. When opening the rear door of the vehicle, there was a huge surprise: eight African men and boys from Eritrea and Sudan were hiding there.

They fled clandestinely from their impoverished and conflicting countries. France was the destiny they had in mind; The disaster, however, led them to Catalonia, as the carrier did not open the box in any of the stops that he did in the Galician country, the last one in Nimes. The driver's reaction to discover that group of people hiding between the cargo consisted of closing the door again as quickly as he could.

In a last desperate attempt (and frustrated) to stay in Europe, one of the unfortunate travelers, explain sources from the City Council of Celrà , managed to escape when the driver opened the box, but was found by a watchman municipal, which he handed over to the National Police. Then the trucker called Emergency Phone 112 and waited for Mossos d'Esquadra to arrive , they confirmed sources of the body. In turn, the Catalan police warned the National, competent in foreign affairs. After making the relevant checks, the agents took five men of legal age at the Girona Police Station.

"They were very tired and hungry, two days ago they did not eat," they explain from the National Police, who served and nourished them. The procedure was immediately activated to return to France, a possible procedure under a bilateral agreement with that country, which will probably do the same to send them back to Italy, the starting point of the desperate journey. The other three, minors, are under the supervision of the Directorate General of Children and Adolescents (DGAIA) of the Generalitat . Funds of this body confirmed yesterday that they have been transferred to a reception center (in the province there is one: the one of Misericòrdia, in the capital).

The driver explained to the police that he spent time in Ventimiglia, an Italian town that is close to the French border. And it was probably where the eight Africans took the opportunity to slip into the truck;They would have needed help from third parties, since the door of the truck can not be closed from the inside, the ACN news agency points out.

"Poverty is one of the main socio-economic characteristics of Eritrea", one of the "main countries" from which asylum seeks in "many Western countries," says the Diplomatic Information Office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs . «The remittances of money that the Eritrean countries settled abroad send to their country account for 30% of the Gross Domestic Product». In 2005, the Global Peace Agreement ended the war between northern and southern Sudan. Since 2011 South Sudan is independent. The UN and the African Union have military personnel deployed to guarantee peace. In border territories the armed struggle is maintained.

*Software translation*