The president of the Government of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, yesterday raised the tone of the island's demands given the possibility that the support of the Canary Coalition will finally be decisive for Pedro Sánchez to be sworn in as president. The Canarian nationalists tighten the rope and warn that the favorable vote of the only representative they have in Congress, Cristina Válido, will not be free.
The upsurge in the arrival of immigrants to the archipelago – and the trail of victims and missing persons on these journeys – is once again the workhorse and the main demand of the Canarian nationalist formation.
Despite the fact that it is ideologically closer to the PP, with which it governs in the islands, than to the PSOE, and that it was one of the supporters of Alberto Núñez Feijóo in his failed investiture, the Canarian Coalition has been immersed in a double game for months. right and left.
On the one hand, his deputy Cristina Válido is open to supporting the investiture of Pedro Sánchez as long as the demands and the Canarian agenda are met, even despite the amnesty. On the other hand, the president of the Government of the Canary Islands and general secretary of CC, Fernando Clavijo, is suspicious of Sánchez, and questions CC's support because "it is difficult to trust someone who does not comply", as he pointed out this week.
The intense arrival of boats that the islands have experienced in the last 48 hours, with the arrival of more than 1,000 people, leads Clavijo to “raise his voice again” and criticize Pedro Sánchez's “apathy” towards the islands.
On Monday alone, almost 400 people arrived on seven boats to the island of Lanzarote, whose reception center collapsed. In order to serve the immigrants, tents and temporary bathrooms had to be installed on the Puerto Naos dock, where the immigrants spent the night. The Canary Islands migratory route also ended on Monday with the death of seven immigrants from one of the boats that arrived, after the inflatable boat in which they were traveling capsized just 78 kilometers from Lanzarote. Yesterday was also an intense day for the arrival of immigrants: almost 600 people arrived on the islands of El Hierro – one of the three cayucos that arrived did so with 280 people – and Fuerteventura, whose reception centers are at their limit. It is true that the Canary Islands Plan has been operational on the islands since 2021 and that arriving immigrants are transferred to the peninsula within a month or month and a half, which allows a high turnover of the 4,000 reception places that the Ministry Inclusion has spread across all the islands and a relief for the centers. However, when there is a massive arrival, like this week, the centers collapse.
Another added problem is the more than 2,900 unaccompanied minor immigrants who are protected by the Government of the Canary Islands with an extra cost to their accounts of 14 million euros. So far this year, only 370 minors have been transferred to other autonomous communities and the Canary Islands demand a rule with the status of law that requires a proportional distribution of these children.
“Beyond the expansion of the reception centers, we do not have any type of response or from Sumar, specifically from the acting Minister of Social Rights, Ione Belarra, who has to transfer the funds for the guardianship of unaccompanied minors, nor from any other ministry," said Clavijo yesterday, who insists on the need to create a single command, to which the Government of the Canary Islands can turn to confront the migration phenomenon. Currently, up to six ministries are involved and with three of them the regional Executive has not had any type of dialogue in the three months of the migratory rebound that has resulted to date in the arrival of more than 15,500 people to the islands.
