Spain La Restinga, the quiet port of divers startled by the wave of immigration: "Look, mom, a canoe!"

It is almost five in the afternoon and a woman is having coffee on the terrace when a scream from her daughter startles her and, in the process, puts the entire port of La Restinga, on the Canary Island of El Hierro, on alert. She hasn’t hurt herself, but rather she acts as a lookout: “Look, mom, a canoe!” A new barge with about 70 people on board, the first today and the tenth in the last 72 hours, was sighted 1.5 miles away from land. Minutes later she arrived at the port, quite full of water and with large star flags painted on the bow and stern of the boat. It is one of the common methods to identify and differentiate these vessels. At the port, they explain that the flag is popular because they see it on television in the broadcasts of Barcelona matches.

Until that moment it had been a day of tranquility after two days in which the arrivals took place in a frenetic manner, with approximately 1,200 people arriving in El Hierro in nine different boats. Among them, on Tuesday, the largest since there have been records on the Canary Islands route, with 280 people on board.

This Thursday, as EL MUNDO was able to verify, activity in this port, a regular destination for divers from all over Europe, was limited to the cleaning and destruction of the boats that had arrived during the week. Several of them, of considerable size and with features that showed that the people who had been in them had done so for several days (there were clothes, remains of food and even a mobile phone could be seen), were about to be intervened in the moment in which this new cayuco has been sighted.

Members of the Red Cross and the Canarian Emergency Service (SUC) have already traveled to La Restinga to help these people. Some of them have needed medical assistance, with symptoms of apparent dehydration, although none of them seem to be serious.

At the same time, the Government has today begun to transfer the migrants who have been arriving in recent days to the island of Tenerife. This morning two ships transported more than 300 people, so most of the hundreds of people who have arrived at the port of La Restinga in the last 48 hours still remain on the island. El Hierro, with barely 11,000 inhabitants, does not have resources or infrastructure to assimilate the continuous arrival of irregular migrants.

The most complicated situation continues to occur with unaccompanied minors who arrive on the island, and who experience slower processes for their referral. Currently there are about 200 on the island, although the Canarian Government has committed this Thursday through its vice president Manuel Domínguez (PP) to establishing a limit of 40 on the island. Two minors were traveling in the canoe that arrived at the port of La Restinga this Thursday, as well as seven women.

Javier Armas, senator for El Hierro and councilor of the Cabildo, has traveled to La Restinga to see first-hand what happened this afternoon. “Politically, we have a very clear vision: the State has not provided the solution or the necessary means to address a problem that the State itself has been detecting for a long time.” From the Agrupación Herreña Independiente, the party to which Armas belongs, they are convinced that it is necessary to pay greater attention to both the arrival process and the time that migrants spend on the island until they are transferred to Tenerife or Gran Canaria: “It is a state problem. The population of El Hierro cannot always be seen alone.”

Yesterday, the 27 EU member states reached a provisional agreement for the new migration crisis management regulation relating to crisis situations and force majeure situations. However, Armas believes that this does not solve the root problem: “EU resources are being allocated to mitigating and monitoring, when what is really effective is investing in the source of the problem.” explains the senator, who adds: “No one leaves their country by choice, much less risking their life.”

Íñigo Vila, director of the Spanish Red Cross Emergency Unit, has also traveled to El Hierro to see first-hand everything that is happening on the Canary Island: “We are going to continue reinforcing the operation. Our management team and volunteers They have been working 10 hours straight,” Vila remarks when asked by EL MUNDO. On average, these people sail in the canoes for six or seven days. “They survive with the supplies they have been able to bring in and with the fuel they have been able to carry.” All the boats come from Senegal, which has been going through an internal crisis since the summer that has caused many Senegalese, especially the youngest, to see no future in their country and try to flee. “They arrive with symptoms of fatigue and exhaustion, but touching Spanish territory is a reason for joy. The bad things they have have some compensation when they arrive here although, sometimes, they are misplaced and do not know where they have arrived.”