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PUERTO RICO, Spain – After braving the Atlantic for six days in a rickety and overcrowded fishing boat, a group of young Senegalese people spent the last three weeks in a three-star hotel in the Canary Islands overlooking a spectacular beach by untouched water is washed around.
The six young men are relieved to have survived their dangerous journey to the Canary Islands, which has become the deadliest crossing for migrants from Africa to Europe, but they also know that their hotel stay is not a fairytale end to their odyssey.
“I’m happy to be alive after this crazy trip, but I really have no idea how long I can stay here or where to go next,” said Ousseynou Diop, 19, who was on board in the Senegalese port of Saint the fishing boat left Louis on November 1st.
Approximately 20,000 migrants have reached the Canary Islands so far this year, despite several deadly shipwrecks off Senegal and other African countries and some that occurred as the boats hit the coast of the Spanish archipelago. According to the International Organization for Migration, between January and the end of November at least 568 people died while crossing from Africa to the Spanish islands.
The sudden influx of migrants has hit the Spanish authorities flat, despite lawyers and other experts warning that traffickers would likely reroute to the Canary Islands after an increase in patrols practically closed many Mediterranean routes to Europe, especially from Libya.
Instead, Spain is now pressuring its partners in the European Union to put in place a system of equitable distribution of migrants among member states and is calling on Morocco and other African nations to take back those with no legal rights if the travel restrictions are related to the coronavirus has very complicated deportations .
“We are the southern border of Europe, not Spain,” said Hana Jalloul, Spain’s migration secretary, in a video conference with a group of foreign correspondents late last month. Other European countries that are accepting fewer migrants “should take our situation into account,” she added.
The steady influx of migrants hits Spain as the coronavirus has choked its economy, especially its cornerstone, tourism. Since March, the Canary Islands have seen only a fraction of the 13 million tourists who came last year for the beaches and mild climate, which was in great demand during the European winter. In October there were 88 percent fewer foreign visitors than in the same month last year.
Since the summer, as an emergency solution, the Spanish government has moved around 6,000 migrants from tents in Arguineguín, a port in Gran Canaria, one of the main islands of the archipelago, to 17 hotels, several of which were closed by the pandemic they were in the beach town of Puerto Rico.
The move was originally welcomed by local hoteliers who received around 45 euros or $ 55 a day from the authorities in exchange for providing food and shelter for each migrant. However, the tensions have increased as the arrival current has shown no signs of relaxation.
Late last month, hundreds of residents showed they are demanding the migrants’ departure, saying their presence could put off European tourists at the start of the winter season.
“We should put them on planes and send them home because people live here who have invested a lot of money to fill this beautiful place with tourists, and certainly not with migrants,” said one of the protesters, Teresa García Llarena, a Retired and former employee of a car rental company.
The island’s main association of hoteliers did not support the protest, but its Dutch President Tom Smulders said that “this crisis situation has come as far as possible” and urged the Spanish government to evacuate all migrants from hotels by the end of the year .
The mayor of the municipality, which also includes Puerto Rico, Onalia Bueno, warned in an interview that tour operators could soon stop offering stays in Puerto Rico and other holiday resorts in the Canary Islands due to the “wrong image” of migrants. “Tourism and migration are just not compatible,” she said.
Although tourists only occupy 7 percent of the hotel beds operated by members of his association, Mr Smulders predicts that the number of holidaymakers from Northern Europe will increase rapidly as the airlines reopen more routes to the archipelago. The Canary Islands have maintained low levels of Covid-19 infection by following strict lockdown rules and requiring all visitors to test for coronavirus prior to travel.
“Winter is our main tourist season and when you come as a tourist you don’t want to stand next to a building that is full of migrants,” said Smulders.
The Spanish government is led by a socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, and the regional government of the Canary Islands is also led by the socialists. However, politicians have made efforts to coordinate their response to the islands’ migration crisis. The politicians of the archipelago say the central government reacted too late and is now trying to rebuild the infrastructure, which was unnecessarily dismantled after 2006, when the islands last experienced a mass influx, with around 36,000 arrivals this year.
When it became more difficult for migrants to cross the Mediterranean, “we had the ability to do a lot more to prepare, but I think someone in Madrid thought the Canary Islands were magically located on the map changed, and migrants would never come back here, ”said Noemí Santana, the regional minister for social rights in the Canary Islands, in an interview.
While adult migrants are the responsibility of the central government, Ms. Santana and her officials act as legal guardians for approximately 2,000 underage and unaccompanied migrants who are spread across several youth centers.
Their numbers have quadrupled since January, and like adults, the children are mostly Moroccans. Many first traveled from the Moroccan interior to the coast of Western Sahara, a longstanding territorial conflict area where hostilities recently resumed.
16-year-old Saïd and his cousin Mohamed, 17, left their town of El Kelaa des Srarhna, northeast of the tourist center of Marrakech, to reach Dakhla in Western Sahara, where they boarded a boat that went to the Canary Islands.
Said said his older brother paid the traffickers around 1,000 euros for his trip. “The young people in Morocco can now only look forward to the misery, because there is the coronavirus, so there is really no way to work and earn money,” said Saïd, whose full name has not been disclosed according to Spanish rules for the protection of underage migrants can be.
Saïd and his cousin are in a youth center with a makeshift prayer area, soccer field and green setting on the grounds of an abandoned farmhouse.
One of the directors of the local non-governmental organization running the center, Enrique Quintana, said his job sometimes feels like “caring for vulnerable babies” because “migrating to another country with a different language and culture means you are really back starting from scratch whatever you might have accomplished in your life before. “
Like all of his Senegalese companions at the hotel in Puerto Rico, Mr Diop hardly spent any time in school and instead became a fisherman at the age of 12.
However, he said he had struggled to survive with Covid-19 restrictions hurting the local fishing industry, which was already under pressure from Chinese trawlers in Senegalese waters.
Mr Diop said he left Senegal without telling his family and is now hoping to get travel documents to reach Madrid, whose most famous football team, Real Madrid, he loves. But he underlined his lack of preparation and sounded surprised to learn that Madrid was an inland capital.
“If I can’t fish in Madrid, I’ll do anything that makes me money,” he said. “I don’t recommend anyone like me to get to the islands by boat – it’s far too dangerous – but I also don’t want to be back in Senegal, where we sold our sea to the Chinese.”
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