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ARCHIVED - Camp of shame dismantled in the Canary Islands as irregular migration eases off
No boats over the weekend enabled the dismantling of the camp that housed 2,600 irregular migrants just three weeks ago
This weekend the first reception camp for immigrants reaching the Canary Islands by boat in the Arguineguín dock, in the south of Gran Canaria, has been dismantled leaving only a Cruz Roja emergency medical point on site.
The camp was installed three months and nine days ago and was originally erected to cope with a maximum occupancy of 420 migrants and given 14 chemicals toilets and limited showers, but three weeks ago became the focus of national attention when the centre was packed with more than 2,600 irregular migrants living in “inhuman conditions” following what was described by rescue services as an “avalanche” of boats.
With the relocation of the last 27 men who remained in the camp, the Ministry of the Interior has therefore complied with the request made last Friday by the Ombudsman, who urged the Ministry to "immediately" dismantle the camp.
This weekend there were no arrivals of migrant boats in Gran Canaria, which allowed the Ministries of Interior and Migration to relocate the last occupants of the dock in the Barranco Seco camp (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, and in various tourist complexes on the island.
For years Arguineguín has been the main port used by Maritime Rescue operations in the Canary Islands providing medical assistance to the boats detected in waters to the south of the islands.
The Red Cross set up (and dismantled) a little hospital and two or three tents as a first point of care every time Salvamento Marítimo reported that it had rescued a patera in Gran Canaria, a system that normally works well given the relatively low volume of migrant boats, but this summer the continuous arrival of boats has totally overwhelmed the limited resources available.
The number of arrivals started to increase in August, but by September the flow of immigrants intensified and generated the first scenes of overcrowding.
During October and November more than 12,000 immigrants reached the Canary Islands, the majority being sent to Arguineguín.
By 15th November the number of unauthorized arrivals in the islands this year had reached 16,760, eleven times more than in the equivalent period last year and considerably higher than the total for the other Mediterranean coastlines of Spain.
With days of more than 1,000 rescues on the coast of Gran Canaria, the camp was transformed into a place where up to 2,600 people were packed into the area designed for just 420, lacking sufficient tents for everyone, the arrivals sleeping on a blanket spread on the ground, the few chemical toilets shared by hundreds of people and it was impossible to maintain the safety distances required by covid protocols. Voluntary organisations began to refer to the Arguineguín port area, bluntly, as the "camp of shame" and local towns people marched in the streets at the weekends in protest at conditions in the camp.
The Ombudsman demanded its immediate closure on Friday for not offering minimally dignified conditions, but before that the Government of the Canary Islands, the Mogán City Council, the Spanish Commission for Refugee Aid, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, among others, had also complained about the conditions and demanded the closure of the camp.
The mayoress of Mogán, Onalia Bueno said: “We hope that this scenario will not be repeated by the Government of Spain because migrants do not deserve the unworthy treatment that they have been given. This cannot happen again under any circumstances in Spanish territory ”, she stated as council workers assisted in the work to dismantle and disinfect the camp site.
The mayoress announced last week that December 31st will be the deadline for the municipality's apartment complexes and hotels to resume tourist activity and cease to temporarily home the migrants who arrive on the island's coasts, who will have to be relocated to state facilities. “We are going to start resuming tourism and therefore, we need the 7,000 beds that the State has committed itself to providing to accommodate migrants. If the 5,500-bed IFEMA hospital was built in two weeks, it is also possible to set up military camps in less time”.
Although there were no arrivals over the weekend, 70 migrants were intercepted 1.5 nautical miles from the islands on Monday morning and transferred to the port of Santa Cruz in Tenerife.
The majority of the recent wave of irregular migrants are coming from Algeria and Morocco, and are young men in search of work, so are referred to by the EU as irregular immigrants and are economic migrants, not refugees.
Neither country is an EU member, so although nationals from both countries may legally enter Spain with a valid passport, they are not permitted to cross the border without valid documentation.
As Spain is an EU member, it has to follow EU guidelines on migration and cannot "send the migrants back" without going through a repatriation process which has been impossible to implement due to the covid situation.
In the last few months, most of the migrants who have reached the Spanish mainland have simply been released to continue their journey, which takes some of them into France or Belgium, whilst others join the throngs of migrants attempting to reach the UK. These "sin papeles" are not allowed to work legally in Spain, a situation which opens many up to exploitation as they are forced to work "under the radar illegally" if they stay in Spain.
The Spanish government cannot legalise these irregular migrants and enable them to work without encouraging potentially hundreds of thousands more people looking for a better life who would themselves attempt to get into Spain due to the current economic situation in Morocco and Algeria.
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