A total of 911 immigrants of sub-Saharan origin arrived during the early hours of Saturday morning in five cayucos heading to the island of El Hierro. Four of them, with 160, 121, 212 and 320 people, have been rescued by Maritime Rescue and disembarked in the port of La Restringa, in El Hierro. The fifth cayuco has not been transferred to the port, but rather the Civil Guard has transferred the 98 people who were traveling on it to their boat and has taken them to the port of Los Cristianos, in Tenerife, according to sources from the CGT Mar y Puertos union. A sixth cayuco with 32 people arrived at dawn in Arguineguín, Gran Canaria, thus adding 943 immigrants to the islands in the last hours.
The cayuco with 320 immigrants is the largest to arrive in the Canary Islands since this route was opened in 1994 with the arrival of the first boat to the islands in which two Sahrawis were traveling. “It surpasses the one that arrived 15 days ago [on October 3], with 271 people and which was the largest so far,” explains Marcos Díaz, CGT delegate in maritime rescue, to this newspaper. This 271, which until now held the record, also landed in El Hierro, which today, Saturday alone, has received 813 immigrants. This week alone, the island, which has 11,000 inhabitants, has received more than 1,500 immigrants. “I understand that the one that has been diverted to Tenerife is to avoid saturating the Hierro further,” says Marcos Díaz.
Juan, 23 years old, in addition to being a Red Cross volunteer, is a waiter in a bar in the port of La Restringa, which is why he is an exceptional witness to the unprecedented wave of landings that the island is experiencing. “I didn’t know that so many people were coming, 320, but two hundred-odd canoes are always arriving and in the end you don’t know how to value the amount. I knew that enough people were coming but not to break another record. It’s even more impressive when, once on land, you see them sitting in a line that almost reaches the port wall,” he says over the phone while eating quickly so he can answer the call from the Red Cross. “”They have given us notice that they need reinforcements, all the volunteers they can. The staff is scarce and almost 300 people have just arrived. They rely on volunteers like me, but many of us are working. Above all, they need people who know how to filiate, who know French, so that everything is more agile,” he says. “I have seen people from the Red Cross with wheelchairs and stretchers, so they must have come in poor condition and I have seen in quite young children videos”.
The first cayuco this Saturday, with 121 people, including several women and minors, arrived in El Hierro at dawn, later, around 10:30 a.m., another disembarked with 160 sub-Saharans, arriving around 10:30 a.m. Both were rescued by the Adhara rescue boat, which later came to the rescue of two other large canoes, in which 212 and 320 people have been counted.
In the fifth cayuco, in which 98 people were rescued by the Civil Guard and transferred to Tenerife, only men were traveling, and they have been transferred to the port of Los Cristianos, where they disembarked after 12:30 p.m. All of them are men, although 13 are minors, reports Efe. “The Adhara sea rescuer has now gone to pick up that canoe that the Civil Guard evacuated and that was left adrift,” explains Marcos Díaz.
Furthermore, this morning 32 sub-Saharans (20 men, 11 women and one child) arrived at the Arguineguín dock in Gran Canaria, bringing the total number of immigrants arriving in the Canary Islands in the last few hours to 943.
“And the companions of the sea guard Caliope have gone out to an emergency 110 miles south of Los Cristianos, in Tenerife South. It is supposed to be a canoe too, Marcos Díaz announces a new arrival.
