Spain is kicking against the prevailing political mood among Western nations when it comes to migration and policies regarding the African continent.
At a time when the US, the UK, France and Germany are all cutting back their development aid budgets, Madrid remains committed to continued expansion, albeit from a lower starting point.
This week, the Spanish capital has been hosting an African Union-backed "world conference on people of African descent". AfroMadrid2025 will discuss restorative justice and the creation of a new development fund.
It is just the latest sign of how Spain's socialist-led government is seeking to deepen and diversify its engagement with the continent and near neighbour that lies just a few kilometres to the south, across the Straits of Gibraltar.
In July Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares launched a new advisory council of prominent intellectual, diplomatic and cultural figures, more than half of them African, to monitor the delivery of the detailed Spain-Africa strategy that his government published at the end of last year.
