The flow of immigrants arriving by boat from Africa to the Spanish coast is in full deceleration since Spain and Morocco sealed the agreement in mid-March to restore their relations after more than a year of enormous diplomatic crisis. Said agreement represented a turning point that has made it possible to reverse a trend that was rising exponentially.
In February, the arrival of immigrants –whether by sea or by land– had increased by 73.2% compared to last year. Now, according to data from the Ministry of the Interior, that figure –although still positive– stands at 3.3%. And this is largely due to the stagnation of the Canarian route, whose point of departure is mainly the Moroccan coast, controlled by the country's gendarmerie.
Last Monday, Salvamento Marítimo rescued a canoe with 61 men of sub-Saharan origin on board about seven kilometers west of Arguineguín (Gran Canaria). She was the first boat to arrive on the island since July 25. Almost half a month without boats arriving. This summer – counting the entire months of June and July so far – 1,321 migrants have arrived in the islands in 31 small boats. Last year there were 2,145 in 51 boats. If the increase over the previous year is taken as a yardstick, the stagnation of the Canarian route is more evident: if in June 2021 arrivals grew by 112.60%, in June 2022 they have only grown by 4, 3%. In other words, they continue to grow, but if the trend continues, it is expected, according to the ministerial sources consulted, that the numbers can be reversed by turning them negative. The future months of September and October will be crucial, since the mafias take advantage of the calmer waters to launch rubber bands with immigrants into the sea.
This 2022 began with all the NGOs in the field of immigration shouting to the sky. The data was stratospheric and what was worse: the curve continued to grow. February closed with the arrival of 7,319 migrants, 3,093 more than the previous year (73.2%), of which 7,184 arrived in small boats, 87.2% more than in the first two months of 2021. They were only saved in Arrivals through Ceuta and Melilla, which had dropped by 65%, were negative. But it came on March 2, when the agreement between Spain and Morocco was being finalized, and a massive entry into Melilla – such as had not been seen in years – shot up the statistics. The Government then saw a "clear passivity" of Morocco, as government sources explained to La Vanguardia.
In mid-March, the letter in which the head of the Executive, Pedro Sánchez, changed Spain's historical position on the Sahara was revealed. In that letter, with which a new path of bilateral relations began, the agreement reached to "face" common challenges was collected, "especially cooperation in the management of migratory flows in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, always acting with a spirit of full cooperation.
That letter, as can be seen in the graph that accompanies this information, coincides with a turning point in the increase in the arrival of migrants. The annual variation drags five months in descending slope. A pattern that is also repeated, for example, in the number of small boats arriving in the Canary Islands.
Interior sources point to cooperation between the security forces of neighboring countries as a key to fight against the mafias that traffic in immigrants, one of the great concerns of Fernando Grande-Marlaska since he held the ministerial portfolio. So much so that during the months in which relations between Madrid and Rabat were completely broken, communication between counterparts from the Interior was never suspended. And this despite the fact that, at the height of the crisis, more than 10,000 Moroccan citizens – most of them minors – swam into Ceuta due to the permissiveness of the gendarmes. On the opposite side, there is the harshness with which the jump to the Melilla fence was repressed on June 24, which ended with at least more than twenty deceased immigrants.
One of Moncloa's great obsessions ahead of the NATO summit in Madrid was that the new strategic concept of the Atlantic Alliance included as a threat for the first time – as it finally happened – the political use of migration.
