The usual silence of summer nights in the port of Lampedusa was broken last Monday the 19th almost at dawn. Dozens of cameras and journalists responded to the call on land of the man who had been on the Spanish-flagged tugboat for 18 days that had rescued 163 people from the Central Mediterranean cemetery who fled by sea from the war prison in Libya. All the spotlights pointed to one of the informative protagonists of the summer. To the lifeguard embarked on a humanitarian battle against two titans: one (Matteo Salvini) limps on the most extreme right. The other (Pedro Sánchez) stumbles to the left.

“We are kidnapped on the high seas while the [Spanish] Government stands in profile and says that we are not their problem”, repeated Òscar Camps Gausachs (Barcelona, ​​1963) in front of the microphones. Hours before, from Madrid, Vice President Carmen Calvo had already delivered the first blow: "He did not want to enter Malta and went to Italy." The dialectical pulse continued while the immigrants trapped on board had become hostages to a political crisis. That night the tragic news reached Lampedusa of a shipwreck off the Libyan coast in which a hundred people would have drowned. But the spotlights and the front pages were still on the entrenched situation of Camps' ship and on the darts that were thrown at each other.

This is the story of a man who wanted to be a cartoonist and who has ended up fishing for those immigrants that Europe does not want to accept. Many consider Òscar Camps a miracle on the waters of the Mediterranean. A great guy, impulsive and with a strong character, who with his NGO (Proactiva Open Arms) has saved almost 60,000 lives since 2015. It all started when the photo of the corpse of little Aylan Kurdi on a beach on the Turkish coast shook the conscience of this Catalan and prompted him to leave his comfortable life in Barcelona and go to Lesbos (Greece) to help the refugees.

But, within the so-called third sector, that of non-profit entities, there are also voices (who ask to remain anonymous) critical of the leading role that Òscar Camps has played in this entire migration crisis. Many do not understand why he did not disobey the Italian minister, Matteo Salvini, and his policy of closed ports. Why didn't he disembark in Lampedusa - as Carola Rackete, the captain of the Sea Watch 3 ship, did in June - in the face of the desperate situation faced by immigrants who had been sleeping on the deck of a ship for weeks. "Constant fights, discussions on board, the tension that is experienced is unsustainable," Camps himself wrote on Twitter. And it was true. The fatigue (physical and psychological) was increasing. Up to twenty immigrants with their life jackets jumped from the boat into the water trying to reach the coast of Lampedusa. Some didn't even know how to swim.

Other NGO volunteers, including some who have come to work with Camps at Proactiva, also speak of the businessman's obsession with "always hogging the spotlight" and "orchestrating marketing campaigns to raise money by leaving the void other solidarity organizations that operate in the same areas as the Open Arms». The complaints of the volunteers are confined above all to the time in which Proactiva was in Lesbos, where they came to rescue 32,573 people (according to the organization's data) since they began in September 2015. «The same goal, which is help and save lives, we all share it and it doesn't matter if one or the other does it. But Camps has always wanted to cover all the prominence. Where there was a camera, he was the first. Small boats would arrive in the north of Lesbos and he would send the other NGOs to the south to get there first and thus rescue everyone," says an activist who has been working as a volunteer in Greece. «What has pissed me off the most about the Open Arms situation is that Camps sold all the time that everyone was at high risk and still did not disembark. It does not make sense unless he sought to stretch the pulse with Salvini, “adds another activist.

FROM LESBOS TO LAMPEDUSA

This is the flight of the man who was going to go to Greece to bring humanitarian aid but who returned to resume rescue work in the Mediterranean after his ship was blocked for six months by the Spanish government due to the ban on going out into international waters .

Another dramatic image, that of a father and daughter drowned in Mexico while trying to enter the United States, once again pushed Camps into the sea despite Minister Salvini's warnings. "In case of disobedience, arrest," said the Italian politician. And Camps responded forcefully: «He gets out of jail; from the bottom of the sea, no.

On Wednesday, hours after the 83 immigrants who remained on board the Open Arms disembarked in Lampedusa by order of the prosecutor of Agrigento (Sicily), it was the acting vice president, Carmen Calvo, who charged against the Open Arms: « They do not have permission to rescue people at sea," Calvo said, warning Camps that they could face a harsh penalty (up to 900,000 euros). What the vice president did not mention is what the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea says: providing assistance to people who are in danger of dying at sea is an obligation.

The director of Proactiva responded firmly to Carmen Calvo: "Often I don't know if she's really talking or if it's Salvini the ventriloquist."

Camps's pulse has never trembled when it comes to standing up to whoever is necessary. Always with the same forcefulness. Like when three years ago he went to the Vatican to deliver to the Pope a life jacket for a six-year-old Syrian girl whom he could not rescue.

The other life of Òscar Camps is with his family (he is the father of three children) in Tiana, a municipality in the Sierra de la Marina, 15 kilometers from Barcelona. His eldest daughter, Esther, also a lifeguard like her father, has already participated in several rescues. Within the Ciudad Condal circuit, Camps, an outstanding swimmer, has held multiple jobs: manager of a car rental agency in Castelldefels, ambulance employee in Badalona, ​​emergency coordinator at the Red Cross, lifeguard on beaches... In 1999 He founded his company (Proactiva Serveis Aquàtics S.L.) taking advantage of the first decree issued by the Generalitat that regulated the presence of lifeguards in swimming pools. Later he would win a contest to be able to help on the beaches of Badalona. Twenty years later, the lifeguard services of his company, which has more than 600 employees, have spread along the Catalan coast, the Levantine coast, the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands.

In contrast, the businessman long ago left the management of his businesses in the hands of his partners and his wife, Camille Lacouture. He had learned to see that Mediterranean Sea that his grandfather showed him for the first time in a different way since he arrived in Lesbos with a neoprene suit and 15,000 euros to set up an NGO. Today it has three boats (the Open Arms tugboat, the Astral sailboat and the Golfo Azzurro fishing boat) and a budget of more than three million euros (90% of private donations) to rescue immigrants and refugees who want to reach Europe by sea.

But, like most great heroes, Camps also has his detractors. There are mainly the Salvini and Abascal who, from an extreme right ideology, accuse Proactiva of working in collusion with the mafias that traffic in immigrants. This Wednesday, the president of Vox filed a complaint with the State Attorney General's Office against Open Arms for "collaboration with a criminal organization for human trafficking." During these weeks, Santiago Abascal's party has supported Minister Salvini's policy of closing Italian ports. And they have defended endlessly that the only port -by proximity- where the ship with the Spanish flag should have gone was Tunisia. Although what they did not explain is that in the country of the Maghreb immigrants live crowded together in unhealthy conditions and are in a legal limbo that does not allow them to work or leave the country.

The -inflammatory- speech of Vox and Salvini's Northern League against the NGOs continues with the accusation that they cause the "pull effect" by their presence in the Mediterranean. It isn't true. According to data from the Italian Ministry of the Interior, only 8% of all the people who have arrived in Italy by sea this year were disembarked by NGOs. "We all know that you would have preferred to see them dying or dead," Camps responded on Twitter to criticism from a Vox representative.

In recent weeks, the Open Arms crisis has dominated much of the news since Italy and Malta refused to offer them a safe port to disembark, causing a humanitarian (and political) crisis in Europe. The outcome did not come until Tuesday afternoon, when prosecutor Luigi Patronaggio, who had already opened an investigation against Salvini for "alleged kidnapping of people", visited the ship. After verifying the desperate situation in which the 83 immigrants found themselves (days before the minors and several sick people had already disembarked), he ordered the seizure of the Open Arms. The tugboat docked shortly before midnight in Lampedusa. The immigrants came out singing the Bella Ciao and shouting about Boza!, which in the Fula language of West Africa means victory, that everything bad has already happened.

BANDAZOS DE SÁNCHEZ

During these days, inside the ship, among its 17 crew members, Òscar Camps has been the visible face. He only stepped on land to give an interview or buy food and water. Outside the sea, the battle has been between the lock imposed by Salvini and the lurches of the Spanish Government.

The Ministry of Public Works first threatened to fine Open Arms if it continued with the rescues. The policy that Pedro Sánchez had undertaken with the Aquarius, a ship to which he offered a port in Spain three days after the rescue, had disappeared. From Moncloa they made it clear that they had to go to the nearest safe port, knowing the refusal of Italy and Malta to receive the immigrants.

It wasn't until August 15 that Spain offered (along with five other countries) to host them, with the intention that Salvini would give in and let the ship dock in Lampedusa. No luck. Three days later, the Government offered the port of Algeciras and later that of Mallorca. Oscar Camps said no. The situation was already quite untenable. In the words of the captain of the Open Arms, Marc Reig: "The boat cannot extend the navigation even for an hour."

It was then that Carmen Calvo assured in an interview that they actually refused to dock in Malta when they had the chance. Something that they deny from the Open Arms. The final solution taken by the Government was to send a Navy ship, the Audaz, which arrived in Italy on Friday and has orders to bring 15 of those rescued to Spain.

That same Friday, on the Barceloneta beach, a striking drawing appeared: Òscar Camps portrayed as a saint with an immigrant in his arms.