No fence high enough to put off Africans fleeing life of misery Officials from the Guardia Civil monitor the fence daily from a control room ©Alfredo Caliz Spanish officers search for illegal immigrants at the Beni Enzar crossing. They use a heartbeat monitor to check if people are hiding in cars Thousands of people cross the border into Melilla every day to work or to buy goods. Here they enter via the Barrio Chino gate Those that make it over the fence or through the border head for the CETI immigration centre in Melilla The Spanish government hopes the fence between Melilla and Morocco will deter migrants Once they get to the centre they have a long wait before they get to Europe Migrants can spend several months at the centre, which even has it own football team called Club Deportivo CETI Five times he clawed his way up the barbed-wire fence that forms the first barrier between the Spanish territory of Melilla and the rest of Africa. Five times he arrived on the other side, amid a thicket of tripwires, knowing that he had yet to scale the central fence and the final barrier, six metres high like the first. Five times, he was caught and sent back to Morocco. Then, two months ago, on his sixth attempt, Ben Diouf finally made it all the way to the safety of the immigration centre in Melilla. Now the 20-year old from Senegal spends his days waiting for a chance to take the next, crucial leap - across the Mediterranean to Spain, and from there to anywhere in Europe that will give him a chance. I trained as a gardener and shoemaker. I work leather," he says. I want to have a family and a good life. I don't care whether in Senegal or in Europe. God will choose. Mr Diouf made it over the treacherous triple barrier that separates the coastal city of Melilla from Morocco unscathed. But not all are as agile or as lucky in their struggle to enter Melilla, a small slice of Spain in Africa that has turned into a magnet for migrants from west Africa and the Arab world. Along with Ceuta, another overseas Spanish territory in Morocco, this city of 75,000 inhabitants offers the only chance to enter European territory without leaving the continent of Africa. The fence, however, has its own perils: some lose their grip and fall, rip their flesh on the barbed wire or suffer a beating at the hands of Moroccan security guards on the other side of the border. And some pay for the assault on Melilla with their lives: the mortuary of Nador, the Moroccan city on the other side of the fence, currently holds the bodies of seven west African migrants, unclaimed and unidentified, who died during the ascent or drowned in the sea, hoping to reach Melilla on a crowded boat. Officials and activists say there has seen a marked increase in attempts to climb the fence since the summer, most likely because many of the other standard routes into Europe - by boat to the Canary islands or to Malta and Lampedusa in the Mediterranean - are now better guarded. More than 2,000 illegal migrants have entered Melilla this year, double the number in 2010. Reports of mass assaults on the fence, often by hundreds of migrants at the same time, and of deaths and injuries, have triggered anguished political debate in Spain. Critics denounce the fence as the inhumane face of Spanish and European migration policy, but the government in Madrid insists the barrier is the only way to deter illegal migrants from entering the country. Yet for all the barbed wire and high-tech equipment used by the 600 border guards from Spain's Guardia Civil, there is little evidence that this deterrence is working. Indeed, the fence is just one of several daily flashpoints in the never-ending struggle between guards and migrants. Anyone who has cash can buy fake papers, and try to blend into the 25,000-30,000 people who cross the Spanish-Moroccan border every day for work or to buy goods. Some hide in ingeniously modified cars, in pockets of space behind the dashboard or special containers attached to the undercarriage. In response, Spain's Guardia Civil now runs a heartbeat scan on every suspicious car that enters the territory. Still others choose to make the perilous journey by boat from the Moroccan coast to the port of Melilla. You pay the people smugglers by weight. Pregnant women always pay more than women who are not," says Sublieutenant Juan Antonio Martín Rivera, of the Guardia Civil in Melilla. The risk is still tremendous: "Most of the migrants don't know how to swim and the boats are very flimsy," says Mr Martín Rivera. Neither the fence, nor the water, nor the border guards are enough to deter migrants. "They say: sleeping under a bridge in Europe is better than sleeping under a bridge where I came from," says Carlos Montero, the director of the Ceti immigration centre in Melilla. His words are echoed by many of the 926 immigrants that live in the overcrowded facility. Alfa Omar, a 26-year old from Guinea, says he decided to make his way to Europe in January, after a fire destroyed his little market stand, the only source of income for his family. You risk your life but that is what poverty does. We just have too many problems back home," he says. His dream, says Mr Omar, is to study accounting and start a business in Europe, but he knows he faces a long wait - on average a year - before he has a chance of being moved to mainland Europe. We just have too many problems back home Alfa Omar Behind the daily drama loom much larger questions, not least about how far Europe can and should go to keep out the migrants from Africa. Some in Melilla call for the dismantling of the fence. The migrants will arrive in any case, they say, so why put them through such agony? Abdelmalik El Barkani Abdelkader, the Spanish government's delegate in Melilla, says a stronger effort is needed to fight the people smugglers. The only point on which everyone in Melilla seems to agree is that, ultimately, no fence is strong enough to keep the migrants out. "The fence can act as a brake but you cannot stop them from coming," says Mr Martín Rivera from the Guardia Civil. They are fleeing from misery, from hunger and from war. They will always keep coming.