ARCHIVED - Irregular migrants continue to target Canary Islands with triple the 2019 total already

Last year traffic on the Canaries route was 756% up on the previous year

Official figures published by Spain’s Ministry of the Interior show that during the first fortnight of this year 1,069 unauthorized migrants arrived on the beaches of the Canary Islands, well over three times the figure of 320 which was recorded during the equivalent period last year.

A total of 41,861 iregular migrants arrived in Spain by land and sea between January 1st and December 31st, 2020, 29% more than the previous year, when 32,449 arrived, an increase that is mainly due to a huge increase in arrivals to the Canary Islands.

Last year, 23,023 irregular migrants reached the islands, 756.8% more than in 2019, when the total was 2,687, according to data from the Ministry of the Interior.

This does not bode well for the remainder of the new year after 2020 saw a surge in the number of migrants reaching EU territory by travelling by boat from western Africa to the Canaries. This in turn brought about severe problems in the islands as thousands of migrants were crowded into makeshift detention centres on beachfront jetties and in other locations, and even now a program to create new “migrant camps” and move migrants out of hastily commissioned tourist accommodation is only just getting under way.

The situation has come about due to a change in the routes favoured by the people traffickers who transport migrants to Spanish territory, with the Atlantic option now seemingly preferred to the shorter crossings in the Mediterranean. In fact, the government figures for the first two weeks of the year show an overall decrease of 10.7 per cent in the number of migrants reaching Spain, with a total of 1,376 as opposed to 1,541 between 1st and 15th January last year.

In addition, the fortnightly numbers regarding unauthorized arrivals by sea have been falling steadily since the total of 6,395 in the first half of November, and between 1st and 15th January only 168 arrivals were reported on the coastlines of mainland Spain and the Balearics.

However, during the first two weeks of the year there were also 76 successful attempts to cross the land border from Morocco into Spain in the north African enclave of Ceuta and another 60 in the enclave of Melilla: the equivalent figures for the same period in 2020 were 36 and 274.