Amodou Kanteh shook his head slowly as he recounted his seven-day journey across hundreds of kilometres of open sea, crammed into a small wooden boat with 163 other Africans.
Just 15 years old, Amodou said he had left his family in Gambia three months ago, hoping to find work in the European Union to send money back to his impoverished relatives.
His cousin paid around C$1,000 to a people trafficker to secure a spot for Amodou in a small boat headed to the Canary Islands, a part of Spain that’s around 1,600 kilometres offshore from Gambia.
The boat got into trouble not far from the Canaries’ coast line and was rescued by the Spanish coast guard. Five people had died on the way. “One boy was my friend,” Amodou recalled.
He and the others have been put in a camp on the north side of Tenerife with 3,000 other African men who have made the same perilous voyage. He’s attending Spanish classes and hopes that within a few months he will be sent to mainland Spain where he can enroll in school, and then train as a plumber.
“I just want to work,” he said while strolling along a street outside the complex with another teenager from Gambia. “I want my family to be proud of me. I believe something better will come one day. I believe in God. I pray.”
The sprawling camp filled with rows of tents – officially known as the Centro de inmigrantes Las Raíces – sits in a forest next to a busy airport. It’s one of several makeshift immigration centres that have been set up on the Canary Islands in the recent months as the archipelago struggles to cope with a surge in asylum seekers that’s overwhelming local services and putting residents on edge.
While the Canaries have been a destination for irregular migration for decades, there have been a record number of arrivals since late last year due to crackdowns by European border agents on other migration hot spots, notably across the Mediterranean from north Africa to Italy and Greece.
The number of people taking the treacherous route to the Canaries has nearly doubled so far this year to more than 34,000, and the islands are on track to surpass last year’s record of 39,000 arrivals. In the first three days of November, around 1,800 people were rescued by the Spanish coast guard. One boat had left Mauritania three weeks earlier with 58 people on board. Only 10 survived.
The total number of people entering the EU irregularly fell 42 per cent in the first nine months of this year and Mediterranean crossings dropped by as much as 64 per cent, according to EU border control agency Frontex. In that same period, crossings to the Canaries jumped 100 per cent, Frontex said, with most of the people coming from Mali, Morocco, Senegal, Gambia and Mauritania.
The route is not only long but also among the most deadly.
Asylum seekers often travel for up to 15 days in overloaded boats with little food and water, and no navigation equipment. The closest Canary Island to Senegal and Gambia is El Hierro, which is the smallest of the Canaries’ seven islands. “If you miss that island, you will end up in the middle of nowhere in the Atlantic Ocean,” said Stephan Carlsen, who works with the Spanish Commission for Refugees, or CEAR. “And the ocean will slowly move you towards the Caribbean.”
Spain’s interior ministry has estimated that in the first five months of this year, attempted migration to the Canaries has resulted in around 1,000 deaths. Walking the Borders, a Spanish non-profit that works with asylum seekers, put the number of dead and missing at closer to 5,000 over the same period.
“Numerous boats that left Mauritania have disappeared at sea with all the people on board,” the charity said. One fishing boat left Mauritania last February with people bound for the Canaries. It missed El Hierro and was found empty off the coast of Brazil in April.
Saidon Jallow, a 17-year old from Gambia, spent 11 days on a boat loaded with 210 people. They ran out of food and water just before being rescued. Seven people died.
He’s now in the Las Raíces camp hoping to learn enough Spanish to attend regular school. Then he wants to head to Britain and find work as a mechanic.
This migrant is in poor condition after his arrival on Gran Canaria last month. Island officials are seeking help from the mainland as more people arrive.Borja Suarez/Reuters
Canary Islands’ president Fernando Clavijo said the territory is struggling to cope and he has sought help from Madrid and Brussels. The EU has provided €14 million – equivalent to $25-million – to the Canaries for extra reception centres. The Spanish government has promised to help ease the strain on the islands’ resources by relocating more asylum seekers to Spain’s mainland where their cases can be adjudicated. But the process can take months, and in the meantime the number of arrivals keeps rising.
“I refuse to accept that it is normal for people to continue losing their lives while attempting to reach our shores,” Mr. Clavijo told reporters last week. “We cannot take care of them with the dignity they deserve.”
Many people on the islands have offered to help recent arrivals with supplies of food and clothing, and a wall near the entrance of Las Raíces is filled with messages of support. “We are all equal” and “The key is to love,” reads some of the graffiti.
Mr. Carlsen of CEAR said the Spanish government has been more accepting of asylum seekers than some other EU states. But he said the EU must do more to address the issues driving migration. “The solution isn’t increasing the security at the border, because that is clearly not working,” he said.
Canarians protest against illegal immigration this past October in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, one of the two capital cities of the islands.Borja Suarez/Reuters
Many people who live near the Las Raíces camp are less sympathetic. They want the Spanish government to start cracking down on immigration and several anti-immigrant protests have been held on the Canaries. “It was quieter here before they came. No one is happy about this,” said Guaimara Bonilla, who lives on one of the small farms that line the road to Las Raíces. Ms. Bonilla said some of her neighbours have complained about asylum seekers stealing from sheds and pilfering oranges from orchards.
“The neighbours don’t like them,” said Gaston Martinez as he sipped a beer with friends outside the Rincon Gomero restaurant and watched several men from the camp walk along the road. Mr. Martinez moved to nearby Santa Cruz a couple of months ago, from Barcelona, and he was surprised at the number of asylum seekers in Tenerife. He’s a police officer and he said that while many locals are fed up, he hasn’t experienced any problems. “They don’t make any conflict,” he said of the asylum seekers. “They are good people. They come here to go to Europe.”
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