The port of La Restinga, in the south of El Hierro, received this Tuesday afternoon the boat with the most occupants known since the Canary Boat Route opened in 1994: 280 people crowded in lines of eight to ten occupants each, without even space to open your arms.
“I don’t remember any canoe of that size. The maximum on the route, that I remember, was 234 people,” the head of the teams that the Red Cross deploys in the docks of the Canary Islands with each arrival of immigrants, José, confirmed to EFE. Antonio RodrÃguez Verona.
This was the third arrival that has been recorded on the island today. A first canoe carrying 127 people, including two minors, arrived early in the morning at the port of La Restringa and, in the afternoon, another boat with 91 occupants arrived at the same port. In total, and waiting for the exact figures to be confirmed, in a single day almost 500 people have arrived to El Hierro, an island that has a population of 11,000 inhabitants.
The journalist Txema Santana, in a message through the social network