39 Palestinian refugees seek asylum at Barcelona’s airport

By ARITZ PARRA and RENATA BRITO
Associated Press

MADRID (AP) — A group of 39 Palestinian refugees is seeking asylum in Spain after refusing to board back a plane during a Barcelona stopover of their South America-bound flight, Spanish authorities said Friday. Police are investigating the charter flight that flew the group into Spain’s second-largest city on Monday. The flight from Cairo had the Ecuadorean capital, Quito, as its final destination, with scheduled layovers in Barcelona and Bogotá, in Colombia. Once they landed on Monday, the group refused to get back on the aircraft. On Friday, 29 of them were allowed to formally enter Spain and were being taken care of by social services. The asylum requests of the remaining ten were still being “processed,” according to authorities.