Scramble to build camps for migrants in Canary Islands
Spain is building emergency camps to try to cope with an influx of migrants arriving in the Canary Islands from West Africa.
Eight people died this week when their rickety craft capsized close to Lanzarote. Nearly 17,000 migrants have made the eight to 10-day journey to the islands this year, 10 times the number that arrived in the whole of last year. Half this year’s total landed in the past month, many from Morocco and West African countries such as Senegal and war-torn Mali.
The Spanish government, which has been caught off-guard, is setting up the camps, which are designed to hold up to 7000 people, while intensifying diplomatic efforts to try to stop people making the journey.
Anselmo Pestana, the government’s representative on the islands, said the arrivals had ‘‘generated difficulties but obviously none more painful than to see bodies, people arriving on our coasts dead’’.
About 500 migrants are estimated to have died this year.
Last month 140 died after their boat caught fire and capsized off the coast of Senegal.
The government’s policy is to return those who do not qualify for asylum in the European Union back to their country.
The ragtag flotilla bringing those fleeing drought, violence and poverty remains undeterred. The eight people who died this week after crashing into pier rocks off Lanzarote at night were among 40 passengers, many of whom were rescued by local residents wading into the water searching for survivors by the light of their mobile phones.
A ninth body was retrieved on Thursday near Gran Canaria after the coastguard came to the aid of a boat carrying 52 people.
Yesterday 145 people were rescued off the island.
The authorities have been overwhelmed by the number of arrivals. Thousands have been sleeping rough on the islands in conditions denounced by rights groups.
More than 6000 migrants are lodged in a dozen hotels across the islands. The government says the new camps will open next month on Gran Canaria, Tenerife and Fuerteventura, where more than 90 per cent of the migrants arrive.
The crisis has compounded the effect of the coronavirus pandemic on the islands’ damaged tourism sector, which accounts for 35 per cent of their GDP.