Quarantines with cold and without showering for immigrants in the Canary Islands

The old Barranco Seco powder magazine, now converted into a camp for immigrants.Javier Bauluz

The Barranco Seco police camp, which replaced the Gran Canaria dock in Arguineguín and where immigrants must not spend more than 72 hours, has in recent weeks become a makeshift center where hundreds of people have had to serve quarantines for up to 10 days .

In the enclosure, a succession of tents nailed on sandy ground, hot food is not served, immigrants cannot shower regularly, it is very cold and humid and is, according to all the sources consulted, an inappropriate place for sanitary isolation.

The responsibility of keeping them there lies with the Canary Islands Health Council, which, according to the current protocol, should enable spaces to isolate immigrants who test positive and their close contacts.

The Barranco Seco camp, eight kilometers from the center of Las Palmas, was hosting about 260 people on Thursday, most of them of sub-Saharan origin.

All had already exceeded the three days of detention established by law, but, according to police sources, they have been kept there waiting to be assigned another place to quarantine.

Isolation of at least 10 days - both for COVID-19 positives and for their close contacts - is a mandatory requirement to enter the state host network.

As the referral to other spaces is not being carried out with agility, the camp has been accumulating people for about two weeks.

The positives, a minority, have priority and the Ministry of Health finances hotels for their quarantine, but the management of the negatives that are close contacts, which are more numerous groups, requires more infrastructure.

"It is not always possible to find solutions in an agile way given the number of migrants who continuously arrive on our shores, but health care has always been guaranteed both for covid and for any other pathology that has arisen," explains a spokeswoman for the Counseling.

Some of the immigrants have spent up to 10 days there due to this delay, according to various sources who know the routine of the camp.

And the Police have ended up assuming a job that does not correspond to them.

"The Ministry of the Interior and the National Police are making the necessary effort so that these people can pass the quarantine in the best conditions while the competent authority in this area can take charge of them," explained the department of Fernando Grande-Marlaska.

The Barranco Seco camp, beyond not being a suitable place for quarantines, is lacking even for a 72-hour detention.

The situation has improved considerably when compared to the scenario in the Arguineguín pier, but the migrants who have passed through Barranco Seco have been complaining about the cold and humidity for almost two months, the food served is cold and, for some, insufficient, and water has come to be lacking for cleaning.

The Interior Ministry notes that the camp "is subject to constant improvement."

The protocol of discord

The responsibility of the autonomous communities to guarantee the quarantines of irregular immigrants is included in a protocol that the Secretary of State for Migration drew up last summer.

Migrations can participate in the logistics and care of immigrants in isolation, but the document limits its action to a "voluntary" and "temporary" collaboration.

In Gran Canaria there are three shared management centers with the community for this purpose and for a time, when the arrivals of boats broke records, Migrations allowed quarantines to be carried out in hotels.

In the Secretariat they insist, however, that it is an autonomous competence.

"During periods of great influx we were flexible, showing as always a collaboration with the rest of the administrations to favor the well-being of migrants", they affirm.

At the time, this protocol caused a lot of discomfort in Andalusia, Murcia and also in the Canary Islands, the main ports of arrival for boats, and their leaders complained that the central government had discharged this responsibility on them.

Despite the complaints, the affected communities ended up adopting the guidelines.

“The Canary Islands were against this protocol that was approved unilaterally, but even so the Government of the Canary Islands has been finding housing solutions in coordination with the Government Delegation and is waiting for the reception places that it has promised to be enabled the State ”, has specified a spokeswoman of Health.

The islands have been overwhelmed with the arrival of 23,000 irregular immigrants, but they were an example at the beginning of the pandemic as they were the first autonomous community to carry out PCR on all people arriving by boat.

The huge influx of people, however, ended up leading to failure to comply with health guidelines.

In Arguineguín, where 2,600 people were crowded, the Ombudsman demanded the urgent closure of the camp to the Interior, but also gave a wake-up call to the Canarian health authorities. Social distancing on the pier was impossible and there, in an anarchic way, people with negative and positive tests lived together. In his recommendation of November 24, the Ombudsman asked the Ministry of Health for "coordination" with the General State Administration, councils and city councils to identify "specific residential resources" to carry out the mandatory quarantines of migrants with positive cases of covid .