JEAN-CHARLES left Yaoundé in Cameroon three years ago and headed for Europe. He spent a year travelling across Africa and two years sleeping rough in northern Morocco.

On 14 occasions, he tried to scramble into the Spanish enclave of Melilla, but was beaten off by frontier police.

Last weekend he succeeded. Together with up to 100 others, he had reached the European Union. “I’m happy,” he said. “No, that’s not right. In fact, I’m much more than happy.”

Melilla is an ugly town of 66,400 people on a tiny stretch of North African coast that has belonged to Spain since 1497. It and Spain’s other small enclave on the same shoreline, Ceuta, are Europe’s only borders with Africa. For the past two nights it has been stormed by up to 500 would-be immigrants. Most were repelled, but police say 300 have beaten the fence since the weekend.

For these people, Melilla is the gateway from the poverty of their homelands to the West.

This year waves of Africans, mainly from sub-Saharan countries, have been arriving in the region. Most spend weeks, if not months, in the Mariguari, Mount Gurgu or Rostrogordo forests in Morocco, seeking a way into Melilla. The most effective method, they have found, is to use improvised ladders in groups of several hundred, overwhelming the Spanish police.

At least 20 such incursions have been made this year. About 50 Guardia Civil officers have been injured, and probably hundreds of immigrants.

Three Africans have died, including Joseph Abunaw, 17, from Douala in Cameroon. His friends said he had been beaten with a rifle butt and was found vomiting blood. The Spanish authorities deny this.

The violence follows the upsurge in the number of immigrants making for Melilla. Between January and September, Spanish police recorded more than 11,000 attempts to cross the border there, compared with a few hundred a year over the previous decade.

Juan José Imbroda, Melilla’s council leader, blames the increase on José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the Spanish Prime Minister, for offering an amnesty to 500,000 illegal immigrants in Spain.

“They phone their friends and families and say, ‘we’ve been given the right to stay and it’s great’,” Señor Imbroda said.

The Government blames the rise on tighter border controls elsewhere. Ministers say they are determined to stem the flow. Melilla’s 6½-mile border is now patrolled by 568 Guardia Civil officers. The border fence is being doubled in height to 6.1m (20ft). But that has spurred migrant efforts to cross before the work is completed.

In theory, those who get in could be expelled to Morocco or their own countries. But in practice, Morocco takes only those who can be shown to have crossed its territory; and there is rarely any proof of this. As none of the immigrants has documents of origin, it is all but impossible for the Spanish authorities to send them home.

Instead, they are housed in a “temporary” refuge. Designed for 480 people, it now holds more than 800. So, every time a new group arrives, some existing residents are transferred to centres in mainland Spain.

This is the destination of which they dream. “I’m going to get a place in the centre tomorrow,” said Jean-Charles, 33, who has a diploma as a sports teacher. “Hopefully, I’ll be sent to the mainland in a few weeks. Then I’ll look for work.”

Recalling his two years in the forests, he said: “I lived like an animal. I had to beg for money and often I ate out of dustbins.

“I was arrested by the Moroccan police 32 times and they expelled me to Algeria each time. I always came back on foot. The journey takes between five and eight days.

“But I never lost faith and now I’ve made it.”

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