'Casa nostra, casa vostra'

Thousands of people marched through the streets of downtown Barcelona on Saturday shouting the slogan "Casa nostra, casa vostra" (Our home, your home).

Barcelona had prepared its plan for welcoming Syrian and Iraqi refugees back in September 2015. It put its municipal services on standby and organized an army of volunteers, whose generosity inspired residents in Madrid and Valencia to open their own cities to refugees. In the meantime, much of the rest of Europe was busy building walls, fencing itself in, warding inflows off, hardening its laws and ignoring not just the plight of the refugees themselves, but also the difficulties faced by Greece and Italy, Lesvos and Lampedusa.

This amazing show of solidarity - not rhetorical but actual and tangible - from the Catalans convinced the Spanish government to raise its commitment for taking in refugees trapped in Greece and...