“Behind every historical record of occupants in a cayuco, behind every daily count of rescues there are people who risk their lives fleeing hunger and war. Our obligation is to place these migrant people in front of the statistics and guarantee them a dignified and humane treatment”. This was the message sent yesterday by the president of the Canary Islands Government, Fernando Clavijo, after a cayuco arrived in El Hierro with 320 migrants, the boat with the most people on board since the so-called Canary route was activated in 1994 , one of the most dangerous in the world.
The migratory crisis that the archipelago is suffering from continues to break records. Until yesterday, the largest boat registered in the registers was the one that arrived on October 3 at the port of La Restinga (El Hierro) with 271 people. Until yesterday, that figure was far exceeded. Migration experts already warned that in the autumn all the statistics would be broken because of the political and social crisis that Senegal is experiencing, because of the good sea in the autumn and because of the type of boats – cayucos instead of pasteras – that leave the Africa
Until mid-afternoon yesterday, almost a thousand migrants had arrived on the islands in just 24 hours. And that, according to the calculations of the Canary Islands Government – which continues to demand more involvement from the Central Executive -, around 500 arrive per day. More and more are women and minors, according to police sources. In addition to the cayuco with 320 people, three other boats arrived in El Hierro, with 159, 121 and 212 people, respectively. A herder was transferred to Tenerife with 98 sub-Saharans; 13 of them minors. And at the Arguineguín pier, in Gran Canaria, 20 men, 11 women and a child arrived after being rescued.
The Central Government continues to make express referrals to other islands and the Peninsula to avoid the collapse of El Hierro, the island most affected by this crisis and where there are barely 11,000 inhabitants. The comprehensive reception system allows migrants to be transferred to the autonomous communities that have free places.
The official message sent by the Ministry of Inclusion is that the system is very strengthened and has already dealt with the reception of more than 20,000 Ukrainian refugees. However, the department headed by José Luis Escrivá is already working on “various contingency plans to strengthen the reception network in the face of possible arrival scenarios”, according to ministerial sources. In Migrations, the “emergency situation” is already activated, which allows the procedures to deal with arrivals to be expedited.
The administrative tool of declaring a state of emergency has been very well received by the Canary Islands Government, which has decided in favor of Escrivá in the face of the belligerent attitude he maintains against the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande- Marlaska. The migration situation requires measures that the ministry led by Escrivá has understood perfectly”, said Clavijo, who already accused the head of the Interior of saying “stupid things” because he “lives in another reality”.
In Interior they are very upset with Clavijo’s attitude. They consider that he is doing the “rudder” politics with a “really serious” issue that should transcend political colors. However, the minister publicly does not want to enter into the cross game of accusations. And even less in a moment of crisis like the current one, which the extreme right takes advantage of to deploy the harshest discourse against immigrants. Marlaska, according to ministerial sources, hopes to be able to go to Senegal, where he will meet with his counterpart, at the end of next week or the beginning of the next. He hopes to return from Senegal with a “gesture” from the Senegalese authorities in terms of coastal control, in addition to being able to recover the return flights of irregular immigrants.
