The Popular Party did not attend the visit to the Tenerife youth centre that was previously announced Sector conference for children this Wednesday. No representative of the communities governed by the party of Alberto Núñez Feijóo has traveled to the Hoya Fría resort, a macro-center that currently houses 234 unaccompanied migrant children. “We ask the PP to find a place in its agenda and, before evaluating the reform of the immigration law, to come to one of these centers and look the children who are here in the eyes,” said the Minister of Youth and Childhood. Sira Rego, before participating in the meeting with the autonomous communities.
Seven autonomous communities have travelled in person to Tenerife to attend the meeting that will discuss the distribution of minors from the Canary Islands: Murcia, Castilla y León, Andalusia, Extremadura, Catalonia, Castilla La Mancha and Navarra. However, no representatives of the regional governments led by the PP attended the visit to the youth centre planned by the Ministry of Youth and Children and the Executive of the Canary Islands.
Although initially the Minister of Social Affairs of the Government of the Canary Islands, Candelaria Delgado, assured that they had visited the centre in Catalonia, Castilla La Mancha, Navarra and Murcia. Sources from the Murcian government have assured this newspaper that they had no proof of that visit. “If that was the case, we were not there,” they pointed out. reports Aitor Riveiro.
“We do not know which PP we are going to meet today,” said Rego upon arrival at the headquarters of the Presidency of the Government of the Canary Islands. “We are coming to the Canary Islands to hold this sectoral conference to address the reform of Article 35 of the Immigration Law and to provide a structural response to the dynamic phenomenon of immigration,” he added. “The government has not changed its position for months and we have presented a proposal based on human rights,” stressed the Minister of Children.
The Minister of Territorial Policy, Ángel Víctor Torres, was the first to arrive at the meeting at around 4:15 p.m. “Anyone who has been to the center has seen the situation the minors are in. There is no other solution than this legislative reform,” he judged in a few short statements to the media.
The Minister of Social Affairs of Castile-La Mancha, Bárbara García (PSOE), has announced that she will vote in favour of the voluntary transfer of 396 unaccompanied minors, as proposed at the Sector Conference in June. Regarding the reform of the immigration law, he pointed out that they received the draft “yesterday afternoon”, but that they have given their full cooperation “if the law needs to be changed to guarantee the rights of children” and if the proposal is accompanied by sufficient financing. His Catalan counterpart, Carles Campuzano, has limited himself to demanding that “the problem of overcrowding” in the centres of the Canary Islands not be transferred to the peninsula.