On Tuesday 3 January, staff from the Ombudsman’s Office visited the Detention Centre for Foreign Nationals (Centro de Internamiento de Extranjeros, CIE) in Madrid, after the Council of Ministers’ meeting on 30 December gave its approval to the contracting of building work to repair deficiencies in the facilities.
The institution reiterated suggestions made previously about making improvements to CIE facilities and asked the Police Headquarters to fit out a multi-confessional room and another multi-use room for leisure and training with sufficient material.
It also asked for all the centre’s outbuildings to be painted, and for video-surveillance cameras to be installed to cover areas where they are still missing.
The Office of the Ombudsman took a positive view of installing cameras in the temporary separation rooms and putting in place an automatic opening system for the doors to the rooms.
It is waiting for a reply to the suggestions that it made in its previous visit on 26 and 27 October 2016.
Of note among them is the request for permanent medical care at the centre, access to the complete, computerised medical history, for language not to be an obstacle for the health services and for a medical examination to be performed on repatriated persons and for it to be accompanied by their medical history.
On 20 December, the Ombudsman, Soledad Becerril, appeared before the Joint Committee for Relations with the Ombudsman’s Office to report on the oversight of these centres, and specifically Aluche Detention Centre for Foreign Nationals in Madrid, carried out by the institution.
