MADRID: Spain Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez heads on a three-day visit to West Africa on Tuesday, as his left-wing government grapples with a major upsurge in migrant arrivals, notably in the Canary Islands.
Nearly every day, Spain’s coastguard rescues a boat carrying dozens of African migrants towards the islands which are located off the northwestern coast of Africa.
The upsurge has left the Atlantic archipelago feeling increasingly abandoned by Madrid and Brussels.
Sanchez on Tuesday starts a three-day tour to the main countries concerned: Mauritania, The Gambia and Senegal.
It was not known what incentives he could offer – notably to Mauritania, the main migrant departure point, which he visited six months ago – to encourage the authorities there to step up efforts to prevent migrants from setting sail.
Fernando Clavijo, the Canary Islands’ regional leader who met Sanchez on Friday, said he believes there are “more than 150,000 refugees” ready to set sail from Mauritania’s coastline.
And he urged the European Union to take its share of responsibility “so that the Canary Islands do not have to shoulder all of Europe’s migratory pressure on its own”.
“In the end, it’s a pressure for Europe because they are arriving in Europe, in Spain, and not just on the Canary Islands,” he said.
The Canary Islands and Spain tend to be just the first stopping point for West African migrants who usually head to other European countries, notably France.
Unaccompanied minors
Arrivals in the past year have more than doubled – between January 1 and August 15 this year, 22,304 migrants reached the Islands, compared with 9,864 in the same period in 2023 – an increase of 126 percent, according to interior ministry figures.
The number of migrants increased across the whole of Spain with 31,155 arrivals to mid-August, a 66.2-percent increase on the 18,745 a year earlier.
And recent history suggests the upward trend is only likely to increase as the autumn ushers in better weather conditions for navigating the Atlantic waters.
Last year saw a record 39,910 arrivals, but current levels suggest 2024 is on track to set a new record, confirming the Atlantic route to the Canaries as the main conduit for migrants despite its treacherous nature.
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The route is particularly perilous due to its strong currents, with thousands of deaths and disappearances every year as people seek to cross in overloaded, often unseaworthy boats.
But this is not the only part of southern Spain to be affected by an upsurge in arrivals, with the tiny enclave of Ceuta also experiencing a sharp rise in newcomers in recent weeks.
Located on the coast of North Africa, Ceuta and its fellow enclave Melilla, have long been a magnet for fleeing violence and poverty across Africa and seeking refuge by crossing Africa’s only land borders with the EU.
For these areas, the main problem is unaccompanied minors who cross alone and cannot legally be sent back, and whose presence has had an impact on Spain’s domestic politics.
Abandoned
This has meant the frontline regions have been completely inundated by the surge in minors for whom they have to care.
In the Canaries, the regional government is currently caring for 5,100 foreign minors despite only having capacity at its centres for 2,000.
And the situation is similar in Ceuta.
To resolve the problem, Sanchez’s government in July tried to push a modification of the immigration law through parliament that would have given it the power to share out minors across all of Spain’s 17 regions.
But the right-wing Popular Party, the far-right Vox and Carles Puigdemont’s hardline Catalan separatist party JxCat, which has also taken a hard line on illegal immigration, blocked the text from being discussed.
When he met Sanchez on Friday, Canary Islands’ Clavijo only secured a fresh pledge for 50 million euros, the same sum the islands’ received for the past two years and far from the 150 million he says his administration has so far spent this year.
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