The summer holidays of dozens of tourists and Canarian residents collapsed this Friday the immigration drama. A canoe with 66 people on board arrived early in the morning under its own power in Playa de Las Burras (municipality of San Bartolomé de Tirajana, in Gran Canaria), a small beach in the south of the island full of hotels, apartments and restaurants. Three women and two minors were traveling on the boat, one of them a three-month-old baby and the other a child of about ten years old, as reported by the government delegation and 112 Canarias. However, the two minors arrived in good health They were transferred to the Mother and Child Hospital along with their guardians from Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
The condition of the rest of the occupants is good of the circumstances under which the journey took place, of which no details have yet emerged. Two people arrived in critical condition and were rushed by helicopter to the city's Insular Hospital. Another eleven had to be transferred, both to Insular and to Juan Negrín: three of them were in critical condition and four with serious pathologies. The precarious state of health of a large part of the migrants required a wide deployment of personnel from both the Canary Islands Emergency Service, dependent on the Canary Islands Government, and the Red Cross and primary care personnel from the Canary Islands Health Service.
This is not the only boat whose occupants managed to survive the dangerous route to the Canary Islands on Friday. The Salvamar Macondo The Maritime Rescue accompanied another canoe to the Arguineguín dock in Mogán at 11am. There were 145 people of sub-Saharan origin on board the boat. Among them were 134 men, eight women and three minors, all in good health. A spokesman for the government agency explained that it was an echo from the radar of the Integrated External Surveillance System (SIVE) that detected the presence of this ship at around 9am, about 15 kilometres southeast of Gran Canaria. The ship was at the Macondowho accompanied her to the quay, located southwest of Gran Canaria.
Between January 1 and July 15, 19,793 people arrived illegally by sea in the Canary Islands, which, according to the Ministry of the Interior's balance sheet, represents a 160% increase compared to the same period in 2023. However, this increase is fundamentally due to the recovery in arrivals at the beginning of the year.: Between January and February alone, 11,932 migrants were registered. Since then, the rate has fallen: 1,183 in March, 2,867 in April, 1,135 in May, 2,140 in June and 536 in the first half of July.
Ombudsman calls for “urgent and structural measures” for minors
The Ombudsman, Ángel Gabilondo, visited two reception centres for minor migrants on the island of Tenerife on Friday to obtain first-hand knowledge of the situation as reported by the institution.
Gabilondo first moved to the Hoya Fría minors reception centre, one of the largest in the Canary Islands reception network, and then to La Orotava. When he left the Hoya Fría centre, he asked for “urgent and structural measures” to address the situation of these minors, recalling that “it is a problem that concerns us all, and not just the Canary Islands.” In this sense, he assured that “we all have to do better.” “Without solidarity, there is nothing to do and with that alone we cannot get where we want to go. There must be legal and other types of changes,” Gabilondo said.
The Ombudsman has called for co-responsibility. According to him, it is enough to go to a centre to see the children and feel their pain due to the lack of expectations. 'They have been in the centres for months and see no horizon.' We do not have to imagine what they want, we have to discover what they are like, by talking to them and being close to them,” he added.
Gabilondo has asked that there be no “distribution” of minors. “We are talking about people, not goods. 'It sends a bad signal, let's talk about relocation,' he suggested. In the same way, he has asked that this situation not be used as part of a 'political confrontation'. The joint deputy (Ombudsman of the Canary Islands), María Dolores Padrón, also participated in both visits.
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