Refugees in Spain – The Canary Islands do not want to become the new Lesbos

Canaries are not allowed a second Moria become – you hear this phrase often and from very different sides. You can hear this from a mayor of Gran Canaria who wants to punish hotels that give rooms to refugees. And by humanitarian organizations fighting for decent housing for these people. The Spanish immigration commissioner says so, as does the opposition leader.

But the images are reminiscent of the refugee camp of Moria, on the Greek island of Lesbos: on the wall of the port of Arguineguín, in the south of Gran Canaria, about 2,000 people were squatting without blankets or protection from the sun. Meanwhile, the situation has eased somewhat, says Antonio Morales, president of the island’s council Gran canaria. There are tents, everything seems a bit more organized than a few days ago. But 1000 people are still waiting in the port. “He’s not worthy of dealing with them,” Morales says.

The crossing is life-threatening

People waiting there for the result of their crown test and the affirmation of their identity crossed the Atlantic on boats from the west coast of Africa. Depending on the departure location, the crossing takes anywhere from two days to two weeks, says Txema Santana of the humanitarian organization CEAR. Some boat refugees from countries far south of the Sahara arrive in such bad condition that their legs can hardly support them and threaten to drown in knee-deep waters.

The crossing is life-threatening, according to United Nations estimates, every 16 refugees by boat die on the Atlantic route. If the boats miss the island chain, they drift into the sea and the people to certain death. At least eight people died off the coast of Lanzarote on Wednesday.

However, hundreds of mostly young men set out on the road. “Right now, around 280 people come in every day,” Santana says. Much more than in October, when a total of 5,000 refugees and migrants landed in the Canary Islands.

Something else has changed: currently mainly Moroccans arrive. “Many of them are fleeing the aftermath of the pandemic,” Santana said. Most of these people are not entitled to asylum; there are currently only 352 asylum applications in the Canary Islands.

Hotels that have been hosting migrants since 1 January may have to pay a fine of up to 300,000 euros.

There is still not enough accommodation for those who survived and survived the procedure at the harbor wall. The Spanish government has rented hotels and bungalows for around 6,000 people. Currently almost all the hotels in the Canary Islands are empty, due to Corona many holidaymakers have stayed home. “We usually have an occupancy rate of 90 to 95 percent right now,” says Tom Smulders, head of the Gran Canaria Hotel Association. At the moment only 8% of the beds are occupied by tourists, while another 3.5% are reserved for refugees and migrants.

While there is no doubt that Africans were disputing hotels with tourists, the mayor of the holiday resort of Mogán in Gran Canaria gave the government an ultimatum: Hotels that still host migrants since January 1 may face a fine to 300,000. EUR. “We cannot allow Gran Canaria to become a prison due to the inaction and lack of coordination of this government, in Lampedusa or a lesbian‘Onalia Bueno said.

7,000 places in camps created by the military

Government commissioner for migration, Hana Jalloul, rejects the ultimatum: she sees empty hotels as a pragmatic interim solution. “That way, the employees have jobs again and the migrants have safe housing,” he says. Incidentally, he did not understand the idea that hotels are reserved for tourists only. “These people have been through bad things, why shouldn’t they be allowed to rest in a hotel that is empty anyway?”

But the government also knows that hotels are not a permanent solution. Now they want to build 7,000 places in camps created by the military. The Ministry of Migration calls it a “giant plan”. “But so many people only came in November,” says Santana, a spokesperson for the CEAR. According to the Spanish Interior Ministry, some 19,000 refugees and migrants have landed in the Canary Islands since the beginning of the year.

Of them, around 4,000 people may have already traveled to the mainland. According to the online newspaper “El Confidencial”, police sources confirm the number that people wanted to continue in France. CEAR spokesperson Santana does not want to confirm the number of 4,000 people who have traveled, but also notes with concern that some of them continue to fend for themselves: “These people are threatened with illegality and vulnerability.”

Migration Secretary Hana Jalloul doesn’t want to know about additional travelers. “It is not the responsibility of our ministry,” he says. The Interior Ministry also mentions just 2,000 women and children who were flown to the mainland. They are not willing to achieve more, they do not want to create incentives for refugees.

But opposition leader Pablo Casado accuses Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of precisely this. Casado said it was a mistake to take the Aquarius rescue ship with 629 people in June 2018. Sánchez is thus responsible for the “worst migration crisis that Spain has ever experienced”. For comparison: in 2006 36,000 migrants arrived in the Canary Islands.

Posted today at 6:00 am