There are already 31,776 migrants who have arrived in the Canary Islands in 2023, surpassing the numbers of the so-called cayuco crisis when, in 2006, 31,678 people arrived in the archipelago. The 1,071 people who have arrived to the archipelago in the last 48 hours are added to the 30,705 counted by the Interior until Thursday, so that arrivals this year to the islands more than double those of the previous year at this time.
In total, 45,475 migrants have arrived in Spain irregularly so far this year. In this way, 2023 becomes the second year since 1999 with the highest number of arrivals of migrants through irregular routes to Spain, only behind 2018, when a total of 57,498 people arrived on the Spanish coasts, in this case, the majority arrived on the Peninsula. During 2006, in the so-called cayuco crisis, a total of 39,180 people arrived, of which 31,678 arrived in the Canary Islands.
Specifically, entries by sea have grown by more than 66% despite the number of vessels having decreased. Likewise, the document made official by the Interior until October 31 reflects that the number of entries by sea to Melilla and Ceuta has decreased. In the first, it has gone from 144 to 133 arrivals, a lower 7.6%; while in Ceuta they have gone from 118 to 60 (-49.2%).
The number of irregular entries to Ceuta and Melilla by land is also reduced. Thus, between January 1 and October 31, 2023, a total of 1,114 migrants arrived through this route, 46.1% less than in the same period of 2022, when 2,067 entries were registered.
Specifically, a total of 969 migrants in an irregular situation have arrived in Ceuta by land, 62 more than in the same months of the previous year; and to Melilla, 145, 87.5% less than in the same period of 2022, when a total of 1,160 entries were recorded.
Four cayucos arrived this morning in El Hierro with half a thousand people, four of them died in the port of La Restinga and in the island's hospital. As health and emergency services sources have informed EFE, it has been a night in which there have been "numerous medical transfers, since several members of these migrant expeditions have arrived in very bad condition."
The 112 has informed EFE that the first two canoes arriving in El Hierro were sighted around 6:12 p.m. this Friday, and its 254 occupants were disembarked after midnight in La Restinga, all in good health.
Two other cayucos located at 9:40 p.m. yesterday arrived late in the morning at the same port of La Restinga, this time, with worse luck for four of them: two arrived dead and two others died in the island's hospital.
