Mena has several meanings in Spanish. It can mean ore (a material from which metal can be extracted), it’s also a type of fish (the blotched picarel) and it’s even a Spanish surname.
However, its most common usage in Spain today is to refer to unaccompanied foreign minors. Interestingly, Spain's Royal Academy of Language has not yet included it in the dictionary.
Mena, sometimes written in capitals MENA, is an acronym for Menor Extranjero No Acompañado.
You’re likely to hear mena a lot on the news in Spain or when people talk about migration as there is currently a row brewing over the care and distribution of migrant minors in Spain, as the bulk of them are arriving in the Canary Islands, and authorities there are overwhelmed.
According to Spain’s Central Register of Foreigners (RCE), there are currently 15,045 menas between the ages of 16 and 23 in Spain.
Those over the age of 18 included in the numbers received mena residency protection because they were minors when they first arrived in Spain, most of the time by crossing on small overcrowded boats called pateras.
Sometimes it’s impossible to know their approximate age without first carrying out an X-ray of their wrist bones.
The vast majority of menas in Spain are male (only 6 percent female), which may explain why most of the time the masculine form is used (el mena/los menas).
These unaccompanied minors mostly hail from North African and sub-Saharan countries, although there are some from the Middle East as well.
Opinions over Spain’s menas are divided, but what is for certain is that they have been the subject of many fake news stories (bulos, one of our other Spanish Words of the Day).
Back in 2021, Spanish far-right party Vox sparked controversy with a Madrid election campaign poster that falsely claimed unaccompanied migrant minors receive 10 times more state aid than a pensioner.
Vox were forced to take down the posters but party leader Abascal is now making the claim again: “Spaniards will have to pay €3,000 a month for every mena”.
There have also been false claims circulating online that menas could travel for free across Spain using the government’s youth summer travel programme.
The reality for most foreign unaccompanied minors in Spain is far from cushy and benefits-driven, with reports that the centres where they stay in the Canaries are overcrowded and unhygienic and that many aren’t receiving any form of education or language classes.
In fact, the word mena is now considered by some to have racist undertones, as it’s been embraced by the far right and thus turned the concept of an unaccompanied minor into something bad.
Many NGOS are now calling for people to stop using the acronym.
Words such as asylum seeker, migrant or refugee have also acquired negative connotations in some circles of the English-speaking world.
Therefore, when talking about los menas, keep in mind that it’s becoming an increasingly loaded word, and that you’re probably better off using the full version: menores no acompañados or menores extranjeros no acompañados, or just referring to them as jóvenes (youngsters) or chicos (boys), which is what they are after all.
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