Spain may pass Greece as new migrant gateway into Europe
SPAIN could surpass Greece this year as a gateway for migrants entering Europe by sea, international monitors warned yesterday, as the number of arrivals swells to treble that of 2016.
Amid a crackdown on migration through Libya, more than 8,000 people have turned to the so-called Western Mediterranean Route from Morocco into Spain this year, compared with 2,500 during the same period in 2016.
On Wednesday, sunbathers on a beach near Cadiz were shocked to see a black rubber dinghy loaded with migrants landing on the shore, its occupants quickly leaping from the vessel and running away.
Jose Maraver, head of the Maritime Rescue centre in nearby Tarifa, said that a second boat had landed on an- other beach in the area yesterday, while two vessels had to be rescued.
“Every day there are boats, every day there is migration,” he said. “The situation is getting very complicated.”
African migrants are also increasingly setting their sights on Ceuta, a Spanish enclave in Morocco, which has seen a 230 per cent rise in arrivals in recent weeks. On Wednesday, authorities there said they had closed the border to trade for a week to cope with the surge, after a string of mass incursions through its security fence.
On Monday, almost 200 migrants stormed the double fence and ran through security checkpoints, one officer suffering a broken leg in the stampede, which was captured on CCTV.
Yesterday, a group of about 700 subsaharan Africans tried to break through but were pushed back by Moroccan police, officials said. An earlier attempt by around 1,000 migrants armed with sticks and home-made spears was thwarted by officers from both countries. On Wednesday, 12 migrants arrived in Ceuta’s waters on jet-skis, one of them – a 28-year-old Guinean man – drowning before authorities reached him.
Spain has already received more arrivals this year than in the whole of 2016, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said yesterday. Almost 8,200 migrants had arrived on Spanish shores by August 6, according to the IOM. Italy remains by far the biggest gateway, accounting for 85 per cent of arrivals by sea since the start of 2017, with more than 96,400. But Spain is catching up with Greece, where 11,713 have landed. “It’s possible that
‘Every day there are boats, every day there is migration. The situation is getting very complicated’
Spain will outperform Greece this year,” Joel Millman, an IOM spokesperson, told AFP. “If so, that’s a big change.”
The Spanish government has remained quiet on the issue, the Interior Ministry not responding to The Daily Telegraph’s request for comment. But opposition parties and leading media outlets have been sounding the alarm.
An editorial by the centre-left newspaper El Pais yesterday urged that “Spain cannot be left alone as the guardian of the south of Europe,” saying it was “obvious that the migratory pressure has transferred to the western Mediterranean” and that action from Brussels was needed.
Conditions in Libya and a policy by the Libyan coastguard of blocking migrant boats heading to Italy may be behind the surge in the number of Africans going to Spain in their attempts to reach Europe.
Mr Millman said the crossing from Morocco was considered by migrants to be a “safe route”. So far this year the Libyan coastguard has blocked around 12,000 migrants from leaving the coast towards Italy. They are doing so at the request of the EU, which is seeking to collaborate with the Libyans to stop the exodus. Since 2014, more than half a million migrants and refugees have reached Italy from North Africa.
Tens of thousands of migrants in Libya are now being kept in detention centres. According to an Oxfam report this week, migrants and refugees are being raped, abused, tortured and in some cases killed in Libya. Some are sold in modern-day slave markets and used as unpaid labour.