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The president of the Canary Islands,

Ángel Víctor Torres

, on Monday urged the State Administration to "react" to the incessant arrival of African immigrants to the islands, a phenomenon that goes beyond the response mechanisms offered by the deficient reception network.

The flow of people is being "much higher" than the reception capacity, which is why Spain and Europe have demanded an "immediate" and "urgent" response.

Torres has referred to the historical record that has been lived this weekend in the Canary Islands, where 2,188 immigrants rescued from 58 boats have arrived, 1,461 of them on Saturday, and has stated that "the assessment is simple: the flow of arrivals is being far superior to the host response. "

The Arguineguín wharf, in the southwest of Gran Canaria, "had 1,500 people, it became less than 50, to once again house 1,500, to have, four or five days ago, less than 100, and accommodate 2,000" this Monday, the president of the Canary Islands has referred.

"They are absorbed, they are distributed, they are relocated, but the flow of arrivals is much higher than the reception response," said Torres, who, as he did on November 6 before the European Commissioner for the Interior,

Ylva Johansson

, and her Spanish counterpart, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, stressed this Monday that "an immediacy and an urgent response is needed to dismantle Arguineguín."

Tension in Arguineguín

"I appeal to that urgency and to the solidarity commitment of Europe that Commissioner Johansson guaranteed" in her recent visit to Gran Canaria, so that it is not "in words", Torres said.

The President of the Canarian Government recalled that he warned, both Grande-Marlaska and Johansson, that "we are not at the moment of planning, but of the reactions" to this migratory rebound whose circumstances complicate Covid-19, which it implies "that the answers are urgent".

Pateras moored at the Arguineguín dock (Gran Canaria), this Sunday.

Precisely, the emergency camp in the port of Arguineguín has been the scene this Monday of scenes of tension between part of its occupants and the Police, with about 2,000 people crowded on the dock, many of them without shade under which to protect themselves.

After a weekend that has broken two records of arrivals of immigrants to the Canary Islands, the daily -1,461, on Saturday- and the accumulated in 48 hours -2,118 people-, the Arguineguín camp, which was set up in mid-August to house to a maximum of 400 people, the day began with 1,871 and less and less space for each one.

171 immigrants in one day

And throughout the morning this Monday, the Salvamar Menkalinan has landed in that port in the south of Gran Canaria another 171 immigrants, collected from six boats in waters south of the island.

Around noon, a group of young Maghreb who were sitting on the edge of the pier began to jump into the boats moored to the port, to pick up things from them and to throw them at their companions.

When the unit of the National Police Corps that takes care of the security of the pier realized what they were doing, it cut the scene expeditiously: with blows of the baton.

The tension lasted only a few minutes, until the group that was sitting on the edge of the dock dissolved and everyone returned to the room that was their turn, delimited by plastic strips.

Meanwhile, the occupants of the dock who have no place under the awnings tried to protect themselves from the sun that shines in the south of Gran Canaria with the hood of a sweatshirt or a coat, if they had such clothes, or by shading themselves with cardboard.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • Canary Islands

  • Europe

  • Spain

  • Fernando Grande-Marlaska

  • immigration

  • Coronavirus

  • Covid 19

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