Spain struggles with spike in migrant arrivals
ALGECIRAS: Since being plucked from a packed inflatable boat by Spanish rescuers in the Mediterranean, Glenn Alban has slept outdoors on a bed of flattened cardboard boxes in the port of Algeciras in southern Spain.
The 18yearold Cameroonian says he gets just two meals a day – milk and a biscuit for breakfast and juice and a sandwich for dinner – as he waits to be identified by police and allowed to leave the port, one of Europe’s biggest.
“As you can see it is difficult. It is so hot,” he said on Monday as he pointed to his makeshift bed, which was sheltered from the blazing sun by a Red Cross blanket he had tied between a fence and a concrete road barrier.
“I did not expect to stay here for a long time like this. I am shocked. I can’t believe it,” said Alban, who lived in Morocco for two years before making the crossing to Spain, adding that he had expected a more efficient reception in Europe.
He is part of a surge in the number of migrants arriving by sea on Spain’s southern shores from North Africa that is stretching the country’s security forces and safety net.
Spain has overtaken Italy as the preferred destination for migrant arrivals in Europe this year as a crackdown by Libyan authorities has made it more difficult for them to reach Italian shores.
Over 22,000 people have arrived by sea so far this year according to Spain’s maritime rescue service – more than during all of last year.
Just since Friday more than 1,500 migrants have landed in the southern province of Cadiz in Andalucia, with the majority of the new arrivals funnelling through Algeciras.
Dozens of migrants were filmed landing on a beach at Tarifa near Algeciras on Saturday before sprinting into woodland as stunned sunbathers – some of them naked – looked on, in videos that went viral on social media. With police stations and makeshift emergency shelters set up in sports centres in Cadiz full, many rescued migrants have been forced to sleep inside an orange rescue boat docked in the port of Algeciras, or on the pavement beside it. —