• The report Frontex confirms that 2020 was a record year for the arrival of immigrants to the Canary Islands

  • Immigration: Spain copies the 'Lesbos model' for the Canarian migration crisis

  • Hemeroteca.Spaña creates a camp for 6,000 immigrants in the Canary Islands and pressures Morocco for repatriations

At the Red Cross post of Arguineguín (Gran Canaria) the Maritime Rescue notice arrived at around 8:00 p.m. on Tuesday.

They were alerted that they had intercepted a boat with about thirty immigrants on board, that they were in poor condition and that they had possibly died.

The Red Cross mobilized 24 of its members to go to the Arguineguín dock.

The first to arrive were

Paula

and

Miguel

, both nurses.

They are the two volunteers who appear in the overwhelming image taken by a photographer from the

Efe

agency

.

Miguel holds the inert body of a very young girl, the first person Salvamento Marítimo has gotten off the ship due to gravity.

In the following images, you can see how they place her body on the cement of the pier and try to recover her from the cardiorespiratory arrest she had suffered.

They made it.

- For an ambulance to come, but the medicalized one, you can hear Paula urgently request in a video that also captures the moment.

- Let it come flying, please, Miguel insists.

The girl, who is from Mali and is five years old, was transferred to the Maternal and Child Hospital of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and admitted to the Intensive Medicine Unit, where she was still on Wednesday, serious but stable, according to

Efe

.

A Red Cross volunteer attends to the girl after arriving at the port of Arguineguín.EFE

Salvamento announced the arrival of some thirty immigrants, but in reality 52 disembarked, mainly Senegalese and Malians.

Twenty of them had to be taken to hospital for dehydration and hypothermia.

Among them the little girl in the image and eight other minors.

There were no deaths, as was initially feared.

Íñigo Vila

, director of the Red Cross Emergency Unit, describes this boat as "somewhat strange."

He says this because of the poor condition in which the immigrants arrived and because of its composition: of the 52, 35 were women and 12, minors between zero and 13 years old.

"The Atlantic route is more dangerous for a matter of distance, because of the days of navigation that they have to invest to get from the African coast to the Canary Islands. The normal thing is that women and children do not have a physical constitution to endure so much and they tend to come in smaller numbers. But in the boat on Tuesday the majority are women, when normally it is the opposite, "says Vila.

"But we can not say that it is a change in trend," he adds.

The Red Cross head of Emergencies also explains that while he talks to EL MUNDO -about 5:30 p.m. this Wednesday- they are waiting for another group of immigrants to arrive in Arguineguín.

"Salvamento Marítimo has already intercepted the boat. They warn us that in an hour another 36 people will arrive, although until we intervene we do not know the exact figure. The profile is like yesterday. It seems that they are not in bad condition, but there are approximately half of men and women and four minors, "says Vila, who does not have exact news of the state of the Malian girl.

A Maritime Rescue crew member joins the Red Cross volunteers to revive the girl.

"It is still a bit early, but we hope it evolves well. The teams are very proud to have participated in an intervention like this that ended well, but on the other hand we know that it will not be the last," he laments.

Of the heroes in the photographs, the two volunteers who revived the girl, says that they spent Wednesday disconnected after an exhausting night.

"We have let them rest since the intervention lasted a long time, it took them until almost 10 at night, and the day has been intense, especially in the media and networks," says Vila about the repercussion that the images have had.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • Canary Islands

  • immigration

País VascoGrande-Marlaska questions before the PNV that the presence of one hundred immigrants in Irun is a "massive arrival"

Interview Ángel Víctor Torres, President of the Canary Islands: "A summer of open beaches is possible"

SpainHospitalized 13 immigrants after their rescue in the south of Gran Canaria, including nine minors, one in critical condition

See links of interest

  • Work calendar

  • Torino - Sassuolo

  • Sevilla - Elche, live

  • Bayern - Lazio, live

  • Chelsea - Atlético, live