Moroccan migrants, staying at the León School (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria), protested last Saturday against the government blockade that prevents their departure to the Peninsula.Javier Bauluz
The climate in the hotels and camps where thousands of migrants who arrived in the Canary Islands are accommodated is going from bad to worse.
The fear of deportation, the blockade in the archipelago and the floods and cold in the macro-centers are multiplying the protests and frustration of foreigners who have been hand in hand for months without being able to leave the islands.
In the last week there have been repeated demonstrations, announcements of hunger strikes, self-harm and suicide attempts.
"Or death or Europe" and "The Canary Islands is a prison for immigrants" are some of the slogans that can be read on the banners that have been displayed these days in at least two centers and a hotel in Gran Canaria.
En Español: Tension spreads through migrant shelters in Spain's Canary Islands
The progressive opening of the macrocamps where the nearly 9,000 immigrants who are sheltered in the archipelago awaiting a hypothetical expulsion will be concentrated has heated up the spirits in the hotels where thousands of them are still staying.
Last Friday the Las Raices center was inaugurated, one of the two that have been installed in Tenerife, and it has already started on the wrong foot.
The first group of 80 immigrants, the majority Moroccans and some Mauritanians, arrived at the camp while it was raining and they found a bare ground, eight degrees of temperature, fog, mud and water entering their tents.
At first they tried to resist getting off the bus, the police had to go and they ended up giving in.
Then they rushed to take refuge in the bunk beds under the blanket, according to one of the residents in a video call with EL PAÍS.
I was shivering.
The videos showing the conditions of the camp, with a capacity for up to 2,400 people, are already on almost all the mobile phones of the migrants from all the islands.
Nobody wants to go there.
“The center of Tenerife is a freezer.
And a way of concentrating all of us to return to Morocco.
We don't want to go.
Never ”, says Abd Latif, a 24-year-old Moroccan, during the protest that he starred last Saturday with some thirty compatriots at the door of a hotel in the south of Gran Canaria.
“I studied law in Morocco, then I got two diplomas, but there is no work there.
I invested 4,000 euros to come here, I can't go back, do you understand? ”, He maintains.
The tension in this tourist complex has been unleashed since they have been informed that they will be the next residents of the new camp in Tenerife.
It is not easy to calm them down, they have been in an uproar since Friday.
They consider it the icy prelude to their deportation.
“We want to be able to continue our journey.
People are going crazy here.
People who did not drink, who did nothing, are now losing their minds, ”laments Latif.
Away from the group, another young Moroccan lifts his sweatpants and shows 27 spots on one leg covered in iodine.
He is one of those who is losing his mind.
He was cracked with a razor blade in a nervous breakdown after learning that his mother needs to undergo liver surgery.
“She cried a lot and so did I.
I came here for the good of my family, but who will bear the costs of the operation now if I am still here? ”He asks.
“I suffered a lot from poverty, for my family, to be able to emigrate.
I don't want to go to Tenerife.
I can't go back to Morocco ”.
Next to him, another Moroccan shows cuts on his arms and, on his mobile, shows the image of another compatriot who slit his abdomen.
Another of the boys, says a worker, had to be restrained to prevent him from jumping off a balcony.
The Ministry of the Interior maintains its maxim of diverting only a part of the most vulnerable and asylum seekers to the Peninsula –2,168 people in all of 2020– and is committed to multiplying returns.
The pace of deportations, however, remains low: 80 deportations to Morocco a week, an imminent flight to Senegal that is scheduled for this month and the intention to restart returns with Mauritania.
Given the difficulty of expelling at the rate that the Government would like and the blocking of their trips to the mainland, immigrants accumulate on the islands and the macro-reception centers in the Canary Islands practice in the practice of detention centers with the door open.
The riot police vans have been patrolling the León school for more than a week, one of the two centers in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, which has caused the most neighborhood rejection.
Cruz Blanca, the Franciscan organization that manages them, has denounced attacks and threats against its residents by organized groups.
The neighbors, for their part, declare themselves tired of seeing them wandering through the streets and of some night fights that they run to record with their mobiles.
On Saturday, the 450 Moroccans who are staying there also decided to say enough.
It joined another protest and a brief hunger strike that residents of the Canarias 50 barracks, also in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, organized last Tuesday.
The immigrants, who do not have hot water for everyone, asked to be allowed to go out to the Peninsula.
A few days later, the rains flooded their camp due to a problem in the pipes.
At the school they announced a 24-hour hunger strike and waved banners throughout the day.
"Death is better than return," they wrote.
They asked the Moroccan consulate to speed up the processing of their documents, that they be allowed to reach the continent and protection against attacks.
“Here we suffer a lot of psychological pressure,” denounces Aziz, 46.
"A prisoner at least knows when his sentence will last, but I do not know when I will leave the Canary Islands, while my children wait for me to send them money."
Workers and volunteers under pressure
The pressure is also on the workers and volunteers who have been working for a year in an emergency that is taking hold.
Hostility towards them and their work, in their neighborhoods and on social media, has been growing in recent months.
In the hotels, managed by the Red Cross, there is also a lack of psychological and legal assistance with which to deal with the cases of the sheltered people and there are no activities that allow working on the inclusion of all those who may not be deported.
According to the testimonies collected by EL PAÍS in recent weeks, the difficulties in appeasing the frustration of themselves and of the migrants are becoming more evident every day.