Family reunion on the Arguineguín pier, where this week the coming and going of relatives in search of their relatives has intensified.Javier Bauluz
The noise of the wheels of an old suitcase dragged on a chipped asphalt breaks the silence of Saturday morning on the Gran Canaria dock in Arguineguín.
There are still more than 670 people there, there are lawyers preparing the assistance of the new arrivals, a health team doing PCR and a squad of Galician police coming and going, but calm reigns.
It's the new normal after four months of chaos.
The owner of the suitcase, Fatima, a 50-year-old Moroccan who does not want to give her real name, enters determinedly to the police barrier.
Veil, scarf, coat, double mask, smoked rectangular glasses.
He has just landed from Alicante in search of his 23-year-old nephew, a boy he raised and whose first adventure away from home has been to get on a boat without telling anyone.
“We hadn't heard from him for seven days.
Until yesterday I received a call telling me he was here ”, he says.
“His mother is sick with worry, she just cries.
I don't know how it could have happened to him to come like this! ”, She says angrily.
The Canary Islands continue to receive unprecedented migratory pressure since the so-called crisis of the cayucos that left, especially in Senegal, broke out in 2006.
So far this year, there are already about 19,000 people disembarked, more than half Moroccans, and there are more than 500 dead.
The economic blow of the pandemic and the opportunity for an open, cheaper and less guarded route - albeit the most dangerous one to reach Europe - continues to push hundreds of people to emigrate without expectations.
The traffic of relatives searching the camps for their brothers, cousins, nephews or distant relatives has intensified this week.
The police now follow a protocol and facilitate reunions that a few days ago cost frustration and tears and the alert network is huge and fast.
Everyone knows someone who knows someone.
Ahmed, a young seasonal worker who picks oranges in Valencia, traveled to Gran Canaria on Friday with a triple mission: a cousin is in one of the Barranco Seco tents, his brother is confined to a hotel and another cousin to another.
When he believes that at least he has located all of them, he receives a call from his mother alerting him that another cousin is being held in Arguineguín.
"My head is going to explode, I've been on my feet since three in the morning, without eating and with my whole family calling me," he complains, smiling.
Although the Government has finally placed the archipelago on its priority map, the crisis of reception and reception in the Canary Islands remains uncontrolled.
There are still about 6,000 people staying in hotels, good ammunition for xenophobic propaganda;
legal assistance, which became non-existent, is still not individual and is provided standing;
and the Arguineguín pier, symbol of the management of this crisis, where 2,600 people crowded, continues to serve as a warehouse for people (including women and minors) who do not eat or sleep properly and cannot wash themselves.
The ombudsman, Francisco Fernández Marugán, who arrives in Gran Canaria this Monday to check the situation in person and meet with authorities, has called for its "immediate closure" for violating the basic rights of immigrants, but the pace of solutions is more slow than that of the boats.
The Government trusts that the scenario will improve in the next two weeks.
The expectation, according to police sources, is to dismantle the Arguineguín camp next week and the logistics for the deployment of tents in barracks and other spaces in Gran Canaria, Fuerteventura and Tenerife are underway and at a frantic pace, to accommodate 7,000 people and thus empty the hotel complexes.
The machinery of expulsions to Senegal and Morocco is already preparing and sources familiar with these bilateral talks trust that deportations of large groups of immigrants will begin shortly.
Meanwhile, the newcomers are looking for a way out of the islands, which in recent months have become a barrier against irregular immigration to the mainland.
Despite the requests of the Canary Islands Government, the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migrations, and the Second Vice President Pablo Iglesias himself, referrals to the Peninsula - some 1,800 so far this year - continue to be specific, restricted to very specific profiles. concrete and taboo subject.
The solidarity that Spain demands from its European partners to share the burden of managing arrivals does not apply in its own territory.
There is, however, a key that opens the transit in Schengen territory: a passport.
Sub-Saharan Africans tend to come without documentation and without resources and, although they are the majority of the beneficiaries of referrals to the Peninsula, they face much more difficulties in leaving on their own.
The case of the Moroccans, who this month have been more than 80% of the 6,300 disembarked only in Gran Canaria, according to Salvamento Marítimo, is different.
Many have taken advantage of the end of confinement in Morocco to obtain their passports before boarding, but others make a pilgrimage to their consulate in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
There they try to process the document because, although they are in an irregular situation, they have spent the maximum time of 72 hours in police custody and, as long as they are not being held in a foreigner detention center, they can move around with relative freedom.
To obtain a passport, it is essential to be registered in the islands and that requirement is now another opportunity for profiteers, who charge migrants 200 euros for a free procedure.
An hour after their arrival, Fatima leaves the port with her suitcase in one hand and her nephew in the other.
He is a tall boy with a good-natured face.
He has been on the dock for five days and his black beard peeks out from his mask.
Her aunt, who is a domestic worker, has changed her face and looks at him affectionately, but she already warns her that after the hot reunion she is going to listen to her.
“I just can't understand how he could do this!
If he had never left the house! ”.
He, who planned everything in secret, shrugs.
A new record in November
The month of November already has approximately 7,000 landings in the Canary Islands, which represents a new monthly historical record that had already been reached in October with 5,300 arrivals.
According to sources from Frontex, the European border agency, migratory pressure is expected to continue to rise in the archipelago.
The information, collected in a report by the agency's analysts, places the beginning of the upturn in arrivals that have led to this crisis in August 2019 with a peak of 700 landings in January 2020. “Due to worsening conditions meteorological conditions and the restrictions derived from Covid-19, the number of irregular entries was reduced and remained stable until July, ”the agency says.
Since then, Frontex points out, the islands have experienced an “exponential growth” in landings.