The island of El Hierro woke up this Tuesday with a tense calm after ten days of an intense arrival of immigrants, in which almost 2,500 people have arrived on this small island of 11,000 inhabitants. At dawn Salvamento Marítimo had rescued three boats with a total of 85 people, only one of them had gone to El Hierro with 19 people (the majority, 15, were minors and only four were adults) while the rest arrived in Lanzarote.
The small number of occupants of the boat that had arrived at dawn – nothing like the almost 700 last Wednesday – added to the fact that the Government emptied the El Hierro facilities yesterday and diverted all the adult immigrants who had arrived in the last days to other centers of the islands, gave a respite to the people of El Hierro. “Today there aren't many left but we're on a tough streak,” said yesterday a municipal worker from the San Andrés neighborhood in Valverde, a few meters from the sports center that has 350 places for adult immigrants and that yesterday barely housed 15 people: 4 from the canoe that had arrived at dawn and the rest, immigrants from other boats who had arrived the previous days and who were hospitalized, according to close sources.
The infrastructure is an old sports center with hardly any windows and that a while ago suffered the collapse of its roof. Today it has become the reception center for immigrants who stay in tents installed inside. The high temperatures recorded in the archipelago are felt in this facility, which does not meet the best conditions. “It should be something else but it is what it is,” said another municipal worker. At the door of this facility, a Civil Guard patrol prevents immigrants from taking photos, much less approaching their patio.
About 300 minors, who depend on the Government of the Canary Islands, and who are in the Valverde student residence, do follow El Hierro.
The calm from El Hierro, however, did not last long. At around 3:00 p.m. the 'Salvamar Adhara', based in La Restinga, left again to rescue a boat two miles from the coast that was carrying 220 occupants, of which 16 were women and 7 minors and a baby. At that same time, the Civil Guard patrol boat, the Río Tajo, was participating in two other rescues, one south of Tenerife and another south of El Hierro (both heading to the meridian island although they were diverted to Tenerife), So what seemed like a quiet day turned into another day of massive arrivals. “We are distraught, exhausted, dead, suffocated. Relaxation never comes here. It seems that things are calming down but it is only to receive more people,” said yesterday one of the volunteers who collaborates in caring for the immigrants who arrive at the La Restinga dock.
According to him, there is a certain feeling on the island that there are fewer immigrants because in recent days what they have done has been to refer immigrants directly from the La Restinga dock, once they arrived, to centers on other islands with chartered boats. . “Those who arrived healthy were taken from the port without going through the center of San Andrés, because it was full,” he says. The old monastery of La Frontera, which was opened last week and has capacity for about 250 people, was used the night the largest boat arrived in El Hierro with about 280 people, but later it was closed again “because it does not have conditions”, according to these sources.
It is estimated that there are around 15 vessels that have left the coasts of Senegal and Mauritania and are currently heading to the Canary Islands, where they will arrive in the coming days. “We have several warnings and we are waiting for them to call us,” indicate these sources, who assure that many of the boys who are in El Hierro have evidence of relatives traveling on those boats heading to the islands.
Yesterday, the National Police union Jupol confirmed information reported on Monday by La Vanguardia that indicates that, between now and the end of the year, some 10,000 immigrants could arrive in the Canary Islands. If so, there would be more than 30,000 arrivals by the end of 2023, approaching the record figure reached in 2006, when the 'cayuco crisis' brought 31,678 people to the islands.
