In Algeria, young people who emigrate clandestinely in search of opportunities in Europe – given the lack of them in their country – are called harragas. A word of Arabic origin that means "those who burn", for all the identity documents that immigrants set on fire before jumping into the sea in boats controlled by mafias who see the so-called Algerian route as a window of opportunity to make more and more business.
The arrivals of boats to the coasts of Almería, Murcia, Alicante, Mallorca and Ibiza through this migratory corridor do not stop growing. And in them, according to police sources, not only young Algerians travel, but also Moroccan and sub-Saharan migrants, which confirms that this route is attracting migrants from other routes. The runner gains momentum.
The latest balance of the Ministry of the Interior on immigration, updated this week, shows that the arrivals of migrants to the Peninsula and the Balearic Islands have increased by 31.8% compared to the previous year. This figure does not offer an entirely accurate snapshot of the situation, since the growth experienced in recent weeks is largely influenced by the good weather, which is taken advantage of by criminal organizations to launch more boats into the sea. However, other more consolidated data show that the Algerian route is booming: in 2019, 507 immigrants arrived in the Balearic archipelago; in 2021, 2,402 did so and last year the figure reached 2,637 people.
In the Government they rule out that Algeria is using immigration as retaliation for the rapprochement between Spain and Morocco. The one who did stop using migrants as a political weapon was Rabat: since the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and the King of Morocco, Mohamed VI, sealed the reunion last spring, the Canary Islands route and the jumps over the Ceuta and Melilla have been drastically reduced. Greater police pressure from Rabat has served to reduce arrivals to the Canary Islands by 11% and entries to autonomous cities by land by 66%.
Iñigo Vila, Red Cross Emergency Director, uses the metaphor of water falling through a strainer with numerous holes. If the criminal organizations that traffic in human beings find that one of them has been forcefully sealed, they look for another to continue filtering immigrants through. In other words, greater control over the immensity of the Moroccan coasts and the border perimeters of Ceuta and Melilla is one of the factors that, according to experts, would respond to the increase in the Algerian route. But it is not only that.
The proximity between starting points and Spanish coasts is key. From Oran, in eastern Algeria, it is less than 200 kilometers to reach Almería. The same approximate distance that there is from Mostaganem to the Murcian coast. The distance between cities such as Dellys or Tipasa and Mallorca or Ibiza does not exceed 300 kilometers. This, according to the same police sources, means that the journey can be covered in a few hours compared to trips that can last several days through the Canary route.
Also, criminal organizations in Algeria seem much more professionalized. Tomás Quesada, spokesman in the Balearic Islands for Jucil, the majority association of the Civil Guard, details in a telephone conversation that the boats in which the small boats from Algeria are arriving are relatively small, made of fiberglass and equipped with powerful engines. This turns them into taxi boats, since the skipper makes the crossing, disembarks the migrants and returns to Algeria so as not to get rid of the precious boat. The boats that cross the Algerian route arrive much less crowded with immigrants, which provides greater security on the journey, unlike the migrants who travel crowded in dozens towards the Canary Islands.
In Interior they downplay this boom. As they defend from the ministry, "it occurs in a context of greater migratory pressure towards Europe." A theory that is flatly rejected by the other police sources and humanitarian NGOs consulted.
