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The Spanish Coast Guard picked up more than a hundred migrants from the sea off the Canary Islands.

As a spokesman announced on Sunday, 56 people were picked up on Saturday by two boats, one drifting off Tenerife, the second off Gran Canaria.

All migrants came from sub-Saharan Africa.

On Sunday, 51 migrants were picked up in a boat off Gran Canaria, including two women.

The shortest route to the archipelago in the Atlantic, which is popular with tourists, starts on the coast of Morocco and is more than a hundred kilometers long.

The crossing in the mostly overcrowded boats is extremely dangerous given the strong ocean currents.

According to the Spanish aid organization Caminando Fronteras, almost 2,200 migrants were killed trying to reach Spain by sea last year - most of them en route to the Canary Islands.

According to the Spanish authorities, 2341 migrants arrived in the Canary Islands in the first two months of this year - 112 percent more than in the same period of the previous year.

Last year there were more than 23,000 arrivals, eight times more than in the previous year.

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The increase in the flow of refugees on this route can be attributed to the fact that the European states reached agreements with Turkey, Libya and Morocco to curb migration across the Mediterranean and that controls off Spain's southern coast were significantly tightened.

The increase leads to overcrowded reception centers in the Canary Islands.

In many cases, the migrants first have to be accommodated in makeshift tent camps before they can be brought to military camps or hotels on the island.