Subscribe
Spain’s Canary Islands have become one of the European Union’s hotspots for irregular migration.
The Spanish National Broadcasting service reported that this month at least 13 boats arrived at the islands of El Hierro, Lanzarote, and Fuerteventura.
These makeshift boats carried some 800 people, coming from several countries in the Western coast of Africa.
That flow occurred just one week after it was reported than more than 1.300 migrants arrived in the island of Tenerife.
According to the International Organization for Migration, more than 23 thousand people arrived at the Islands in 2020.
2024 is set to surpass that number. Between January and July, some 21 thousand migrants reached the Canary Islands.
The trend is not showing any indications of coming down, so authorities cannot rule out reaching the 2023 numbers.
2023 showed a dramatic peak, with more than 56 thousand undocumented migrants coming into European territory via Spain through the Islands, according to official data from Spain’s Ministry of the Interior.
The worst peak occurred in 2018, where 64 thousand people flooded into the country.
The lack of long-term solutions from Pedro Sánchez’s government do not conduce to a reduction of the current trend.
This becomes especially worrisome considering some regional governments are sending wrong messages that incentivize perilous sea-bound journeys and illegal crossings.
The Socialist regional president of Spain’s Catalonia region, Mr. Salvador Illa, called for public administrations to “welcome and integrate” migrants. This includes providing taxpayer funded resources to provide them with shelter, health, food, and—in the case of undocumented minors—other social services, including education.
Separatist-influenced Catalonia has, for decades, promoted illegal immigration through lax enforcement of the country’s immigration laws.
The separatists reasoning is that an influx of African migration would dilute Hispanic culture, and thereby the use of the Spanish language.
Illa and the Socialist Party are not separatists, but their ability to govern—both in Catalonia and the country—depends on the separatist parties’ backing.
For 30 years people have been illegally entering European territory through the so-called “Canarian Route.” According to several estimates, almost 230 thousand people have made the journey since 1994.
But the route is nothing short of deadly. The Spanish authorities reported that almost 5 thousand migrants died at sea trying to reach the Islands. That amounts to 32 deaths per day.
Official data revealed that 47 boats went missing throughout the first half of this year.
The national Socialist-led government has responded to this humanitarian crisis by laying out a plan to distribute unaccompanied migrant minors across Spain’s Autonomous Communities.
This is set to ease the burden on the Canary Islands, which are the European Union’s southern border.
The centre-right People’s Party (PP) led by opposition leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo supported the measure.
PP-led regions like Galicia, Andalusia, and Murcia will now welcome these undocumented minors and support them with tax-payer resources.
PP’s backing of Sánchez’s proposal cost the PP its regional alliances with the Conservative VOX party, which saw the move as an inexplicable concession to the governing Socialist-Progressive coalition.
However, the government’s PP-backed proposal does offer any lasting solution to the issue of irregular migration in Spain.
Contrary to countries like Italy, whose Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has led efforts to request aid and the continued involvement of the European Union in helping deal with the humanitarian crisis in Lampedusa, Sánchez’s agenda does not include this as a relevant priority, despite the instability it brings not just to the regional government of the Canary Islands but to the local communities.
While Meloni sends clear signals that those who come illegaly into Italy would be deported, Sánchez with the support of the PP, sends a worrying message that those who enter Spain without documents will be accomodated without consequences.