In Spain's Canaries, rescuers exhausted as new migrant routes open

By Joan Faus and Horaci Garcia

El Hierro, a small island in the Atlantic Ocean, is Europe's latest frontline in the struggle to cut irregular migration. Nearly twice as many migrants as residents have landed this year on the southernmost of Spain's Canary Islands.

On a Sunday in late October, a group of 30 teenagers from Mali and Senegal, some in soccer shirts with headphones around their necks, ambled across a deserted town square in the capital Valverde. A few locals watched silently.

Across town, chairs were piled up in the assembly hall of the Nuestra Señora de los Reyes hospital to make space for beds for smuggled migrants, who often suffer from hypothermia, dehydration or injuries after the roughly eight-day crossing from Africa.

Intended for the island's population of 11,400, the hospital's 31 regular beds are now sheltering people escaping jihadist violence and economic troubles in Mali, as well as upheaval and poverty in Senegal and Morocco.

Some 19,400 illegal migrants had reached El Hierro by mid-November, according to the Red Cross.

"The hospital is swamped," resident Teresa Camacho, 67, told Reuters outside the facility. She said an appointment she had was cancelled to make space for migrants.

The hospital's medical chief Luis Gonzalez, who goes to the port to assess people's health as they arrive in open-topped boats known as cayucos, said he was unaware of this. But he added that staff are exhausted.

The emergency room has spilled into a corridor, there's a tent in the carpark and first aid tents now stand at the port.

This year El Hierro, which accepts no direct flights from outside the archipelago, has received half of all irregular migrant arrivals in the Canaries, an autonomous region of Spain.

The Canaries have registered the fastest increase in arrivals by sea in the European Union this year, data from EU border agency Frontex shows. By Nov. 15, they had received a total of 39,713 migrants, 23% more than in the same period last year, according to Spain's interior ministry.

The rise comes even as illegal migrant arrivals in the EU slumped overall -- by 43% to 191,900 in the year to October, according to Frontex. That includes a 62% slide in Italy where Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has made curbing migration a priority.

Most of those headed to the Canaries left homes in Africa: Smuggling networks have exploited instability in the Sahel region, including a worsening Islamist insurgency in Mali, and are dispatching more boats, said Frontex spokesperson Chris Borowski. Arrivals typically increase in the winter, he said.

The Canaries have drawn nearly 10,000 Malians in January-August, up from 784 in the same period last year, according to the latest available data from Frontex. Senegalese were the second-largest group, Moroccans the third. They board boats in Mauritania, Senegal and Gambia and sail westwards across the Atlantic to the archipelago.

Migrants to Italy come mainly from Bangladesh and Syria, via Libya and Tunisia, and then across the central Mediterranean.

Meloni and the EU have buttressed deals with Libya and Tunisia to control boat launches from there. Similar efforts by Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez with leaders in Mauritania, Senegal and Gambia this year have slowed the rate of increase, but not reversed it.

Under pressure to curb illegal immigration from the conservative opposition and the Canaries government, Socialist Sanchez has noted that immigration is necessary for Spain's economy and welfare state, and promised to make it easier for immigrants to settle.

But a poll published in October by El Pais newspaper found 57% of respondents across Spain thought there were too many immigrants in the country.

Irregular migration only represents 5% to 10% of all migratory arrivals to Europe, said Alberto Ares, migration researcher in the Spanish Comillas Pontifical University and director of a European support network for refugees.

"The route to the Canaries has grown because other routes are blocked," he said, referring to security agreements with countries including Turkey and Morocco.

Italy is still the EU's biggest destination for irregular migrants, with 55,000 arrivals in the first 10 months of this year, according to Frontex data.

Even so, the Canaries government says it is particularly challenged by the numbers of unaccompanied children and young people. More than 5,600 minors are overseen by regional authorities, housed in shelters and educated in schools.

Canaries' vice-president Manuel Dominguez of the conservative People's Party said in an interview his government had more than doubled shelters for minors in around a year, from 30 to 84.

"We cannot deal with this constant avalanche by ourselves," said Dominguez. He said the archipelago has received no financial support from Madrid. However, a spokesperson for Spain's migration ministry said it had given the Canaries government 100 million euros ($106 million) for 2022 and 2023 and agreed a further 50-million-euro package for this year.

CHANGING ROUTES

In El Hierro's La Restinga port, first responders are on alert 24/7 for fresh arrivals -- not all of them alive. In September, 63 of 90 passengers on one boat are believed to have drowned off El Hierro -- the Canaries' worst shipwreck on record. Only nine bodies were found.

In the first weekend of November alone, about 1,000 migrants were rescued from 21 cayucos in the archipelago, according to a Spanish coastguard spokesperson.

Migrants typically pay 400 to 1,500 euros for an up to 2,200-km (1,400 mile) crossing from West Africa, said a Spanish security source, asking not to be named because they were not authorised to talk to the media. Seats by the stern, close to the captain, are the priciest.

El Hierro is the most distant Canary island from Africa, and the route over the open ocean is extremely perilous. Officials believe smugglers took to it last year to avoid African and Spanish coastguard patrols in the waters between the continent and other Canary islands, said Alexis Ramos, spokesperson for the Red Cross in El Hierro.

Unaccompanied minors stay on El Hierro, but most adults who survive the journey are eventually transferred to Tenerife, a larger island in the Canaries, where they stay in camps. They can move freely within Spain while their asylum applications are processed; some move on through Europe's porous land borders.

One 28-year-old Malian said he had reached El Hierro this year from Mauritania, leaving his wife behind. Two of his relatives were killed, he said, asking not to be named because he feared for his own safety. Earning a livelihood in farming had become impossible.

"I couldn't take it anymore," said the man, who cannot read or write, outside a camp in Tenerife. "I came here because I was afraid, but now I don't know what to do."

ARRIVALS FROM ASIA

Migrants will seek alternative routes as long as legal migration paths remain elusive and the root causes of migration are not addressed, said researcher Ares.

People are coming to El Hierro from even further afield.

Several Pakistanis in Tenerife told Reuters they paid smugglers up to 16,000 euros each for the trip, flying to Senegal via the United Arab Emirates and Ethiopia, and boarding boats from Mauritania.

Abid Hussain, 39, was among 65 Pakistanis in a 76-person boat that arrived in October. He said he embarked on a five-day sea journey from Mauritania after two years trying to obtain a visa for Italy, where his wife and two children emigrated in 2023.

"There is no future in Pakistan. European life is easier for children," said Hussain, who comes from a poor family.

Between January and August, 91 Pakistanis reached the Canaries -- up from four in all of 2023, according to Frontex data.

A Canaries official said authorities are worried that sporadic arrivals from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen could signal a permanent shift of migratory flows due to tighter controls by Libyan authorities on boats departing for Italy.

TIGHTER CONTROLS

Spanish police have long operated in Senegal, Mauritania and Gambia to strengthen border controls, but now Madrid is looking to beef up those relations, along the lines of its agreements with Morocco that helped reduce migrant arrivals from there.

Spain asked Frontex to restart an air and maritime surveillance operation, which ended in 2018, in Mauritania, Senegal and Gambia.

For that to happen, the European Commission must first strike a deal with African countries over how it would function.

A Commission spokesperson said it is working on intensifying dialogue and cooperation on migration with Mauritania and Senegal, but did not elaborate.

Spain also wants to boost deportations. Only 2,760 of a total 56,852 irregular migrants were deported to their home countries last year, official data shows.

Spain does not yet have deportation agreements with Mali, Gambia or Senegal, according to a public registry of agreements by Spain's migration ministry.