The sun falls mercilessly on a small square around the Canarias 50 reception camp, in the La Isleta neighborhood, in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Sitting on the back of a bench, a small group of Senegalese spend the hours in the shade of some flamboyant trees. “We arrived several weeks ago to another island,” explains one of them, who prefers not to give his name. “We waited… There was nothing to do at home, anyway.”
This group constitutes a small example of the arrival to the islands of people aboard cayucos and other boats, a phenomenon that has put its political leaders on alert in these first weeks of the legislature and has come to cause the first frictions between the central governments. and autonomous. In August, almost three times more arrived on the islands than in the same month last year. “We need reinforcement that guarantees the first reception that is provided on the islands,” the Minister of Social Welfare, Equality, Youth, Children and Families of the Executive, Candelaria Delgado, stated this Thursday in this regard.
The arrival of migrants by boat to the islands fell 11.3% to 8,508 people in the first seven months of the year, according to data from the Ministry of the Interior. The last few months, however, are showing a certain change in trend, caused both by favorable weather and, above all, the political and social crisis that Senegal and much of the Sahel are experiencing. After two years of instability, the country’s political crisis exploded on June 1 with the sentencing of opposition leader Ousmane Sonko, very popular among young people, to two years in prison.
The result, the reactivation of the canoe departures, which have also reactivated the statistics. In August, 2,931 people arrived on the islands, which has brought the cumulative arrivals to 11,439 people, 802 more than a year before (7.5% more). Last Monday, the Canary Islands received the highest number of immigrant arrivals in a single day so far this year, 634 people in six boats that arrived in Tenerife, Gran Canaria and El Hierro, of which 126 are minors, according to a count of Efe. If the forecasts of the emergency and Maritime Rescue teams are met, the transfer will intensify in the coming weeks, when navigation conditions usually improve. This weekend, 1,136 migrants arrived on the islands aboard 16 irregular boats.
The situation is especially worrying when it comes to unaccompanied minors. Candelaria Delgado explained that children under guardianship in the Canary Islands currently number 2,400, approximately 32% more than a year ago. “The islands cannot face the situation alone with the six million allocated,” the counselor stated in reference to the money that the central Executive approved in the Council of Ministers in September 2022 for the care of unaccompanied foreign minors.
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For this reason, it aspires to close both a new agreement with Migrations and get the Ministry of Equality to distribute between Ceuta, Melilla and the Canary Islands the nearly 35 million planned to finance the failed distribution of between 800 and 900 minors with other communities. “And if there is no such solidarity distribution,” he added, “some type of state legislation must still be carried out that establishes it.”
Complaints from the councils
The arrivals registered in this last part of the year have also led the seven councils of the Canary Islands to convene an extraordinary assembly on Wednesday which was attended, among others, by the president of the Canary Islands himself, Fernando Clavijo and Councilor Delgado. At its end, the island corporations demanded from the central administration “urgent measures in the face of the migration crisis.” The president of the Cabildo of La Gomera and current president of the Canary Islands Federation (Fecai), Casimiro Curbelo, also demanded the “solidarity” of the rest of the autonomous communities in the reception of unaccompanied minors as a result of the “lack of planning.” from the State.”
One day before participating in the Fecai assembly, Clavijo and Delgado traveled to Madrid with a highlight on the agenda: holding a meeting with the Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, José Luis Escrivá. The meeting ended positively for the nationalist leader. “It seems that finally someone in the Government is aware of the dimension of the problem and shares with us the need for planning to address what is foreseeably going to happen,” Clavijo assured the media at the end. The president announced that the minister had explained to him that a reception facility with 300 places will be built on the island of El Hierro, modules will be installed in Gran Canaria, in the Las Canteras barracks in Tenerife and in El Matorral in Fuerteventura. Sources from the Ministry of Migration detailed to EL PAÍS this Thursday that the occupation of resources on the islands is around 60%, compared to the approximate 50% at the beginning of August.
The situation has led the State Attorney General’s Office to demand this Thursday that these resources be permanent. In the opinion of the ministry, the proximity to the African coasts causes “constant” migratory pressure on the Canary Islands, which has worsened in the last three years, according to the State Attorney General’s Office, which warns that the response to these flows should not be improvised, for which calls for permanent facilities to welcome migrants with dignity.
In its Report for 2022, the Public Ministry considers that there should be “permanent facilities” to guarantee immediate reception “in conditions of dignity” and not places prepared according to the needs existing at any given time “and, therefore, subject to to improvisation.” The objective, he asserted, is to avoid “undesirable” situations such as that of the Arguineguín dock in 2020, where more than 2,500 migrants were crowded.
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