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Migrants queue up to receive assistance at Arguineguín port in Gran Canaria on Sunday. The regional president said almost 2,200 people were being housed on the docks.
Migrants queue up to receive assistance at Arguineguín port in Gran Canaria on Sunday. The regional president said almost 2,200 people were being housed on the docks. Photograph: Elvira Urquijo A/EPA
Migrants queue up to receive assistance at Arguineguín port in Gran Canaria on Sunday. The regional president said almost 2,200 people were being housed on the docks. Photograph: Elvira Urquijo A/EPA

Canary Islands appeal for help as 2,200 migrants arrive over weekend

This article is more than 3 years old

People housed in makeshift dock-side camps after braving dangerous Atlantic route from Africa

The president of the Canary Islands has appealed for urgent help from the Spanish government and the EU after around 2,200 migrants arrived on the archipelago over the weekend, putting further strain on its already massively overstretched reception resources.

Ángel Víctor Torres said the Canaries’ existing infrastructure could not cope with the number of people arriving, as the dangerous Atlantic route from Africa to Europe attracted more refugees and migrants.

“It’s not hard to sum up,” Torres said this week. “The flow of arrivals still greatly exceeds the reception capacity. They’re absorbed, they’re distributed and they’re relocated, but the flow of arrivals is still much higher than the reception response.”

The regional president pointed out that 2,188 people had reached the islands over the weekend and that they were being housed in makeshift camps on the docks at Arguineguín on Gran Canaria.

Torres said the Canaries could not be used as “prison islands” where people were held indefinitely, when there was far more reception space available in mainland Spain.

According to the International Organisation for Migration, more than 11,000 people have arrived in the Canaries by sea so far this year, half of them in October alone, while 414 are feared to have died in the attempt. Last year, 2,557 migrants arrived in the archipelago, up from 1,307 in 2018. This year’s figures, however, are well down on 2006, when 32,000 people arrived in the Canaries by sea.

Spain’s interior minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, and the EU’s commissioner for home affairs, Ylva Johansson, visited the islands last week. At a press conference on Friday, Johansson paid tribute to the “tremendous efforts” of the central and regional governments in managing the situation in such difficult times.

But Torres asked for help that went beyond words, saying: “We’re not in a planning phase, we’re in a reaction phase.” He said the Covid-19 pandemic was making things ever harder, called for urgent action to dismantle the Arguineguín camp and appealed for the EU to make good on the “shared European commitment” to managing migration.

Spain’s interior ministry, meanwhile, has been criticised for refusing to allow journalists to document the plight of those stuck on the Arguineguín docks.

Judith Sunderland, Human Rights Watch’s acting deputy director for Europe and central Asia, visited the Canaries over the weekend and described the conditions on the docks as “pretty awful”. She said the Spanish authorities had been slow to act, even after it became clear that the Atlantic route was opening up again.

“The numbers surged and all of a sudden, it’s emergency mode and that’s when things get really bad,” she said. “There are two systemic problems, which are the lack of sufficient reception spaces on the islands and then the failure of the central government to systematically, routinely, and in significant numbers, transfer people to the mainland. Those are two very clear solutions.”

Sunderland said she had spoken to some women on the docks who had been in the hot, crowded camp for more than two weeks. The longer the migrants and refugees stayed in the area, she said, the worse things would get.

“They need to transfer people to the mainland,” she said. “That would alleviate the extreme pressure on the islands right now, which is a recipe for disaster.”

Sunderland recognised that Spain, like Italy, had been badly affected by the pandemic, but said it needed to overhaul its “shortsighted and poor” policymaking. “This is a challenge – but it’s not something that Spain can’t handle in a humane way,” she said. “Of course it can; it’s just a lack of will and coordination and a bit of money.”

In February, Spain’s migration ministry set up its own management centre in Tenerife with the capacity to accommodate 300-400 people and is about to open another centre. But the secretary of state for migration, Hana Jalloul, said the numbers of people arriving were overwhelming the islands’ reception resources.

The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, says the Atlantic route is having a resurgence in popularity because of enduring conflicts, land border closures due to coronavirus and increased controls in some north African countries.

At least 140 people died last month after a boat carrying 200 people caught fire and capsized off the coast of Senegal in the deadliest shipwreck recorded this year.

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