“We have gone from embracing the Aquarius to taking the immigrants who arrive in the Canary Islands and, without talking to the autonomous communities, putting them on planes and leaving them at bus stops.” This is the summary that the president of the Popular Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, made yesterday of the immigration policy that the Government of Pedro Sánchez has carried out in the last five years: since 2018 – after the motion of censure – landed in Valencia a boat with 630 migrants to the migration crisis in the Canary Islands, which is forcing people to be transferred to the Peninsula to avoid the collapse of the reception network in the archipelago.
The opposition leader yesterday stood at the head of the common front led by the autonomous communities governed by the Popular Party. They denounce "the absolute lack of coordination", the "enormous improvisation" and the "lack of communication" with which the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Migration are managing the distribution of immigrants throughout the Peninsula. Some statements that caused “great stupor” within the government where they consider that the president of the popular party has allowed himself to be carried away by the most xenophobic discourse of the extreme right.
The head of Migration, José Luis Escrivá, according to ministerial sources, “is not willing to pass a single one” and has turned his account on X into the platform to respond to all “political irresponsibilities.” “Mr. Feijóo, his words are full of falsehoods. During the transfers, the staff of the entities that work with the ministry accompanies the migrants to the centers where they are welcomed, where NGOs are also located,” he responded in a tweet. “The communities and city councils are informed of the transfers that are going to be carried out, and these institutions do not serve migrants, since it is an exclusive competence of the State exercised by the Ministry of Migration,” he added.
The Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, was more belligerent in his attack against the leader of the PP – and also against the Madrid president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso –, calling his words “ignorant” statements, within “populist speeches”. and irresponsible.” “This tone and these expressions lack real knowledge,” he reproached them.
The Government insists that the reception system is flexible enough to continue opening places depending on arrivals in the Canary Islands. Yesterday two canoes with 324 immigrants were rescued in waters near the island of El Hierro, in addition to another 225 who arrived in Tenerife. On average approximately 500 people per day. In the Canary Islands there are about 6,000 immigrants who have arrived during this wave of Senegalese cayucos. Another 5,000, according to ministerial sources, have been transferred in recent weeks to the Peninsula, where they have been distributed among the communities based on available places or new ones created in hotels or shelters.
”How many [immigrants] have been referred to the PSOE, how many PSOE, Catalans or Basques have raised their hands to say: bring them here? This is an intentional deviation,” denounced the Canarian vice president and leader of the PP on the islands, Manuel Domínguez.
The truth is that, precisely, Catalonia is the territory that has welcomed the most immigrants with almost 2,000 people, among whom around thirty minors. 250 migrants have arrived in the Community of Madrid: 150 at the reception, care and referral center for displaced people (Creade) located in Pozuelo de Alarcón and almost 100 in the capital, staying in shelters and hostels. The first 36 have arrived in the Basque Country and another 50 in Asturias, governed by the PSOE, while 60 more places are being prepared.
Although the political brawl focuses on the distribution of adult migrants – whom the extreme right directly relates to the increase in crime – experts in the field warn that the real challenge facing the system is in the reception network for unaccompanied minors, which depends on the autonomous communities, so they are not being transferred to the Peninsula with the same agility. The president of the Government of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, warned yesterday that NGOs “cannot take any more” with the management of more than 4,400 migrant minors who are under the guardianship of the autonomous community, so he hopes to close in a couple of weeks a proposed law on which they are working, which –basically– what it seeks is a mandatory distribution between regions and that it is not voluntary, as currently.
