Departure of one of the last remaining migrants at the Arguineguín dock, on the afternoon of this Sunday. Javier Bauluz
The Gran Canaria dock in Arguineguín, where more than 2,600 people have slept, apparently has its days numbered.
This Sunday has been a rainy, long and frantic day of coordination between the police, the Red Cross and the Secretary of State for Migration to speed up the transfer of the more than 600 people who were still sleeping on the asphalt.
Throughout the day, buses that left full of migrants have not stopped entering the port to the new police camp in Barranco Seco, eight kilometers from Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, or to the nearby hotels set up as an emergency reception.
Inside there are still, according to police sources, almost thirty people infected with covid-19, who must be transferred to a specific place to keep quarantine.
It is the first time, since this space was improvised in early August, that such a small number of people remain.
The intense work in recent weeks to empty what has been dubbed the "pier of shame" does not mean that it will be closed permanently.
The permanence of the camp depends on the deployment of new reception places and, above all, on the pace of arrivals in the coming days.
In fact, the progress of this Sunday is due, not only to the coordination of the authorities, but to the bad weather conditions that have slowed the arrivals in the last two days.
The Arguineguín dock is one of the main holes in the government's management during this migratory upswing, which has already added more than 19,000 landings so far this year, about half Moroccans.
The Ombudsman, who lands in Gran Canaria this Monday, has asked the Ministry of the Interior for the "immediate closure" of the facilities where he considers that the basic rights of migrants were violated after a visit by his technicians to the camp.
The people who arrive at this pier, which this year concentrates the largest number of disembarkations of irregular immigrants in Spain, sleep on thin blankets and eat just three sandwiches a day and fruit juices.
Their only roof is that of an open canvas tent on the asphalt, they cannot wash themselves and they live with coronavirus positives without the possibility of social distancing.
Minors have also been housed at the pier.
