The number of people who have landed illegally in the Canary Islands amounted to 30,705 on October 31, according to the latest report on irregular immigration from the Ministry of the Interior, published yesterday. Coming mostly from sub-Saharan Africa, and specifically from Senegal, these people arrive at the Canary Islands after completing a trip by cayuco that lasts an average of seven days and covers a distance of 1,400 kilometers.
This figure means that 16,164 more people have arrived in the archipelago than in the same period in 2022 (an increase of 111.2%) and that the Canary Islands have received 69.1% of all irregular arrivals (44,404) that have been registered in Spain until the end of October. This month alone, 15,729 have arrived, which means that more people have reached the Canary Islands in October than in the rest of the months combined. The Interior count does not count the immigrants who arrived on November 1 and 2, which are 218 according to EL MUNDO calculations. Therefore, the total number is, as of today, 30,923.
“Normally, 40% of the exits are cut off on the Atlantic façade,” police sources explain to this newspaper. «There are no magic formulas. The solution that has shown its effectiveness year after year is to have the collaboration of the countries of origin of the trafficking. The factor that has triggered this incessant arrival of cayucos in recent weeks has been the political and social crisis that Senegal is going through since Ousmane Sonko, leader of the country’s opposition, received a two-year prison sentence on June 1. His imprisonment sparked numerous riots and violent clashes that spurred thousands of people to flee at the prospect of not having a future in their country.
The acting Minister of the Interior Fernando Grande-Marlaska traveled to Dakar, the capital of Senegal, last Monday, where he met with his counterpart Me Sidiki Kaba, whom he asked to “strengthen the existing mechanisms to act more quickly and avoid more deaths.” at sea on the route to the western islands of the Canary archipelago. In addition, the minister announced the delivery of six new drones to the Senegalese coastal police to help detect the cayucos.
Spain has a contingent deployed in the African country consisting of 38 troops (33 civil guards and five national police), four boats, a helicopter and 13 all-terrain vehicles that are carrying out joint patrol missions, to which we must add since the 17th October a CN-235 Civil Guard plane that is monitoring the Senegalese and Mauritanian coasts. According to Interior data, the joint work of the Spanish security forces and the actions of local authorities have made it possible to intercept, until October 29, a total of 7,132 people. And, if the data from the interceptions in Senegal are added to those carried out in Mauritania, Gambia and Morocco, a total of 17,426 have been prevented from reaching the Canary Islands. “The forecast is that arrivals have already reached their peak, the numbers are decreasing,” explain these police sources, who also point out that the navigability season has been higher than in other years, which has facilitated the arrival of the cayucos, but that it is already ending. “The migratory phenomena include more than one factor,” the police emphasize. «Immigration is today a multimillion-dollar business that is more profitable than drug trafficking, and the mafias behind it try to maintain it. “That Senegalese are also arriving on the island of Lampedusa says it all.” Precisely, regarding the mafias, Marlaska spoke during his visit to Senegal: “We must stop his unscrupulous actions, which put the lives of thousands of vulnerable people at risk.”
To date, the year in which the most people have arrived to the Canary Islands was 2006, when the so-called cayuco crisis occurred, which caused 31,678 people to disembark on the Canary Islands. With two months left until the end of the year, the trend indicates that 2023 will be, since the first boat arrived in the archipelago in 1994 with two Sahrawis flying a flag of the Polisario Front, the year in which the most arrivals are recorded to through the canary route. “It is a challenge that is here to stay.”
