The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Hotel in Canary Islands offers safe haven to migrants in need
Families fleeing Africa finding shelter, food in unlikely place.
PUERTO RICO DE GRAN CANARIA, SPAIN — When hotel director Calvin Lucock and restaurant owner Unn Tove Saetran said goodbye to one of the last groups of migrants staying in one of the seaside resorts they manage in Spain’s Canary Islands, the British-norwegian couple didn’t know when they would have guests again.
They had initially lost their tourism clientele to the coronavirus pandemic, but then things had taken an unexpected turn.
A humanitarian crisis was unfolding on the archipelago where tens of thousands of African men, women and children were arriving on rudimentary boats. The Spanish government — struggling to accommodate 23,000 people who disembarked on the islands in 2020 — contracted hundreds of hotel rooms left empty due to the coronavirus travel restrictions.
The deal not only helped migrants and asylum-seekers have a place to sleep, it also allowed Lucock to keep most of his hotel staff employed.
But the contract ended in February and thousands of people were transferred out of the hotels and into newly built large-scale migrant camps. Or so they thought.
“We realized that we had a queue of people standing outside when we closed the doors,” said Saetran, a former teacher, at the Holiday Club Puerto Calma in southern Gran Canaria.
Some had ended up on the streets after being expelled from government-funded reception centers, she said. Others had chosen to leave the official system, fearing overcrowded camps and forced returns to the countries they fled from. With the rooms still empty, Saetran said she couldn’t sleep knowing the migrants would be left on the street.
So they reopened the hotel doors again, this time at their own expense.
“They were very scared, they didn’t have anywhere to go, and there wasn’t any other solution,” said Saetran, who has lived in the Canary Islands with Lucock since the ’90s and has a Spanish-born daughter.
Today, the family, with the help of some of the hotel staff and other volunteers, provide food through Saetran’s restaurant, shelter through the hotel and care to 58 young men, including eight unaccompanied minors. Hailing from Morocco, Senegal and other West African countries, they fell out of the official migrant reception and integration system for one reason or another.
‘They were very scared, they didn’t have anywhere to go, and there wasn’t any other solution.’ Unn Tove Saetran Restaurant owner at Holiday Club Puerto Calma