Frederic had never planned to journey to France. His gruelling three-year odyssey from the Ivory Coast had always had Spain as its final destination, a country in which, he had dreamed, he could build a better life.

Yet, two months after he landed in the southern Spanish port of Algeciras, plucked from the sea by the coastguard, he finds himself more than 1000 kilometres to the north in Irún, a rainy Basque Country town nestled on the French border.

He is far from alone: NGOs working in Irún say hundreds of migrants have arrived in the last month alone, drawn by the relative ease of the border crossing. While some make their way to the north independently, most arrive on buses sent by the Spanish Red Cross - which oversees the reception of migrants - to Bilbao or San Sebastian, from where it is just a short ride on local transport to the border town.

Speaking to the Telegraph in a shelter recently opened by concerned Irún residents, Frederic says that after his arrival in the southern port of Algeciras, he was shunted up through the country from place to place, finding in each that nothing awaited him but a transfer to the next.