El Hierro receives over 1,500 migrants in a week as Canary Islands and Madrid clash

Arrivals concentrated on one island

The Atlantic route to the Canary Islands has picked up again, and El Hierro, the westernmost island with about 11,000 residents, has become the main landing point for wooden cayucos from Senegal, Gambia and Mauritania. In the week from Monday 19 October to Monday 26 October, 1,539 people reached the island aboard about twenty boats. Other figures put the weekly total at 1,535, a number given by the Canary government spokesman, and at 1,598, reported by La Razón. On Thursday 22 October, more than 400 people arrived on four boats in a single day. Some boats carried up to 158 people, and one trip brought in more than 200.

Pressure on reception and health services

Authorities have moved people off the island to relieve the strain. The central government's Delegation in the Canaries sent 471 people to Gran Canaria on a ferry from La Estaca port on Sunday 25 October, and about 900 people have left El Hierro since Friday 23 October. Of those taken on Sunday, 390 were still at the Temporary Attention Centre for Foreigners (CATE) in San Andrés and 81 at the former La Frontera convent, run by the Red Cross. On Monday 26 October, radar picked up a cayuco 17.6 kilometres from La Restinga at 05:00, and the boat docked at 06:45 with 59 people aboard, including three women and four minors of sub-Saharan origin. Fernando Clavijo has warned that the island hospital could collapse again. Earlier in the week, two young men who had arrived dead aboard a cayuco carrying 131 people were buried in El Pinar on Wednesday 21 October, one of them a 26-year-old Gambian man whose family said goodbye by video call.

Canary government accuses Madrid of silence

Canary government spokesman Alfonso Cabello accused the central government of "silence and lack of coordination", saying Madrid had intelligence reports on the surge "at least since July" but did not pass them on. He said the regional government had asked the Interior Ministry up to three times, through regional councillor Nieves Lady Barreto, to convene a joint Canary Islands-State security board. Cabello also put October arrivals at 3,899 so far, 240% more than the same 25 days a year earlier.

“Right now, El Hierro, which has 11,000 inhabitants, has received 1,535 migrants in a single week. It is unsustainable.”

On Monday 26 October, Clavijo's letter to Pedro Sánchez asked for six urgent measures, among them an extraordinary meeting of the joint security board, a contingency plan for the coming months and a bigger role for the European Union. The letter also asks the state to specify which extra resources it deployed before the surge and which remain undeployed.

“This is not about seeking retrospective blame, but about ensuring that anticipation, institutional coordination and resource availability are up to a situation that directly affects people's safety.”

Clavijo said he had tried three times to arrange a meeting with Interior Minister Fernando Grande Marlaska without success. The October figures to date stand at 3,814 arrivals across the archipelago, of which 2,776 reached El Hierro.

Canary Islands3,814

El Hierro2,776

Canary Islands

3814 people

El Hierro

2776 people

Data from the article text

Ministers push back

Clavijo made his case in Bilbao, where he spoke at an event organised by the consultancy NTT Data alongside other regional leaders, and he said the state was absent from the crisis.

“We are seeing that Ceuta is going to be left as a buffer zone in the north, Canarias as a buffer zone in the south…”

Ministers Víctor Ángel Torres and Óscar López answered the same day. Torres told Radio Nacional that the Spanish government helps, collaborates, introduces measures and changes the law, and he accused the PP of misleading Canarians by suggesting that returns are the answer. López said Clavijo never addresses the PP, which he said breaks the consensus on migration. Both ministers placed the blame on the PP, the party that governs the Canaries alongside Clavijo, which they said is putting "spokes in the wheels". The exchange unfolds during the run-up to the 29N election. Clavijo's letter to Sánchez remained unanswered at the time of reporting.