The island of El Hierro woke up yesterday with a tense calm after ten days of an intense arrival of immigrants, in which almost 2,500 people have arrived on this small island of 11,000 inhabitants. In the morning Salvament Marítim had rescued three boats with a total of 85 people: only one had headed to El Hierro with 19 people (the majority, 15, were minors, and only four were adults) while the rest arrived in Lanzarote.
The small number of occupants of the boat that had arrived in the morning – nothing to do with the almost 700 on Wednesday -, added to the fact that the Spanish Government yesterday emptied the facilities of El Hierro and diverted all the adult immigrants who had arrived in the last few days in other centers of the islands, gave a respite to the inhabitants of El Hierro. “There aren’t many left today, but thank God for the streak we’ve had,” said a municipal worker in the San Andrés district, in Valverde, a few meters from the sports center, which has 350 places for adult immigrants and which yesterday housed barely 15 people: four from the shepherd who had arrived in the morning, and the rest, immigrants from other boats who had arrived the previous days and who were hospitalized, according to close sources.
The infrastructure is an old sports hall with almost no windows and which suffered from the collapse of the roof some time ago. Today it has become the reception center for immigrants who stay in tents installed inside. The high temperatures recorded in the archipelago are noticeable in this facility, which does not meet the best conditions. “It should be something else, but it is what it is,” said another municipal worker. At the door of this facility, a Civil Guard patrol prevents the immigrants from being photographed, let alone approaching their yard.
There are still around 300 minors in El Hierro, who depend on the Government of the Canary Islands, and who stay in the student residence in Valverde.
El Hierro’s calm, however, was short-lived. Around three in the afternoon, the Salvamar Adhara, based in La Restinga, was going out again to rescue two miles from the coast a boat carrying 220 occupants, of whom 16 were women, seven were minors and there was also a baby At that same time, the Río Tajo Civil Guard patrol boat was involved in two more rescues, one south of Tenerife and another south of El Hierro (both headed for the island of the meridian, although diverted to Tenerife), so what looked like a quiet day turned into another day of mass arrivals. “We are distressed, exhausted, dead, suffocated. Relaxation never comes here. It seems that things are calming down, but it is only to receive more people”, indicated yesterday one of the volunteers who collaborate in the care of the immigrants who arrive at the pier of La Restinga.
According to him, there is a certain feeling on the island that there are fewer immigrants because in recent days what they have done has been to divert them directly from the pier of La Restinga, once they arrived, to centers on other islands with hired ships “Those who arrived healthy were taken from the port without going through the center of San Andrés, because it was full,” he said. The old monastery of La Frontera, which was enabled last week and has a capacity for about 250 people, was used the night that the largest pastor arrived in El Hierro with about 280 people, but then it has closed again “because it is not in good conditions”, according to these sources.
It is estimated that there are about 15 boats that have left the coasts of Senegal and Mauritania and are currently heading to the Canary Islands, where they will arrive in the next few days. “We have several warnings and we are expecting them to call us”, indicate these sources, who assure that many of the boys who are in El Hierro have records of relatives who were going to the islands in these boats.
The union of the National Police Jupol yesterday confirmed a figure advanced on Monday by La Vanguardia and which indicates that around 10,000 immigrants could arrive in the Canary Islands by the end of the year. If this were the case, the 30,000 arrivals by the end of 2023 would be exceeded and they would approach the record figure of 2006, when the so-called Cayucos crisis brought 31,678 people to the islands.
