Relief after 10 days of tension at the 'Open Arms'

Rescue of several migrants, on Friday, at sea.Ricardo García vilanova

After 10 days of waiting, the ship of the Catalan NGO Proactiva Open Arms this Friday finally received permission to disembark in Palermo for the last 140 rescued migrants who remained on board.

The quarantine will be mandatory both for the migrants, who will be confined to a ferry arranged by the Italian Government for that purpose, and for the crew, who will have to stay on the rescue ship for another 14 days.

The authorization came, as it has been since the summer of 2018, after days of great tension and despair among the passage, initially made up of 276 rescued people who had fled Libya.

The people of Palermo who enjoy sea views saw it.

It was eight o'clock on Friday morning when dozens of migrants began jumping overboard from the

.

“Man overboard!” Was heard up to 48 times over

the crew's

.

Another 70 castaways, who were helped by the Italian coast guard and the

lifeguards

had already jumped into the sea the day before.

A short distance from the coast, refugees from bad weather and without answers, they thought it was the only way to get ashore.

Dozens of immigrants are thrown overboard.Twitter Open Arms

"When are we going to land?

Tell me when and I'll stay, ”an Ivorian asked one of the 19 volunteers who was fighting to contain the stampede.

It was impossible.

10 days had passed since the

rescued those traveling in the first of three boats located during the mission.

The ship continued without obtaining permission either from Malta - in whose area of ​​responsibility the rescues were carried out - or from Italy to disembark.

Frustration led to despair, and the migrants were already accumulating too much long before boarding the ship.

Those who stayed wondered, while having milk and biscuits for breakfast on deck, if they had not wasted their last cartridge.

"Will they have problems with the police?";

"Will they return them to their country?" ... The questions piled up, but one always kept repeating itself: "When will we disembark?"

The phone finally rang at 12:46.

It was the Captaincy of Palermo asking the captain of the ship to prepare the passage to transfer it to another ship where they will undergo quarantine.

The joy was not long in exploding on deck: the movement of the ship, already escorted by the Italian coastguards, confirms that this is the final one.

On board the

, people like Anwar, a Senegalese who can't wait to talk to his family via videoconference, but also Marina, the cook, hug, dance and wipe their tears.

Not even the machines made an effort to contain the emotion.

"It has been a real challenge and, above all, very hard," says Albert Mayordomo, the 38-year-old from Barcelona who has commanded what has been the first rescue mission in times of pandemic.

“The people we have rescued have suffered a lot of violence and they arrived exhausted.

The repeated refusal of the port of Malta and Italy during all these days, especially when facing the coast, has only caused a scenario of uncertainty in which they came to distrust our word.

They asked us for a solution that we couldn't give them, and we couldn't lie to them either ”, explains the Catalan from the bridge, still wearing PPE (protective equipment) and without removing his mask.

Mayordomo maintains that the tension that has been experienced on the ship these days is unprecedented, despite the fact that the ship has waited 21 days for a shore response, as happened in August last year.

The next step for the crew will not yet be on land, but anchored just over a mile from the port of Palermo while they pass the quarantine.

Nor will it be for the migrants, who boarded another ship this Friday, the

, one of the five ferries rented by the Italian government to guarantee isolation outside the migrant centers on the island.

It is an imposing ship: more than 150 meters in length and 10 stories high that until this Friday was dedicated to the comfortable transport of thousands of people through the northern Mediterranean.