"We have gone from the embrace of 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 made yesterday by the president of the Popular Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, of the migration policy that the Government of Pedro Sánchez has carried out over the last five years: since 2018 - after the motion of censure - landed in Valencia a ship with 630 migrants in the migration crisis in the Canary Islands which is forcing people to move to the Peninsula to avoid the collapse of the reception network in the archipelago.
The leader of the opposition was placed yesterday at the head of the common front that is starring 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. Statements that caused "great astonishment" in the heart of the central government, where they consider that the popular president has allowed himself to be dragged down by the most xenophobic discourse of the extreme right.
The head of Migrations, according to ministerial sources, "is not prepared to pass a single one" and has turned his account to X into the platform to respond to all "political irresponsibility". "Mr. Feijóo, your words are full of falsehoods. During the transfers, the staff of the entities that work with the ministry accompany the migrants to the centers where they are received, where there are also the oenagés", he replied in a tweet. "Communities and councils are informed of the transfers that will take place, and these institutions do not attend to migrants, as 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 rant against the leader of the PP - and incidentally also against the president of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso -, and called his words declarations "ignorant", within "populist and irresponsible discourses". "This tone and these expressions lack real knowledge", he reproached them.
The Spanish Government insists that the reception system is flexible enough to continue opening places based on arrivals in the Canary Islands. Yesterday, two cayucos with 324 immigrants were rescued in waters near the island of El Hierro, which are added to another 225 who arrived in Tenerife. On average approximately 500 people per day. In the Canary Islands there are around 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 depending on the places available or the new ones created in hotels or hostels.
"How many [immigrants] have referred to those of the PSOE, how many of the PSOE, Catalans or Basques have raised their hands to say: are you bringing them here? This is an intentional deviation", denounced the Canarian vice-president and leader of the PP in the islands, Manuel Domínguez.
The truth is that, precisely, Catalonia is the territory that has welcomed the most immigrants with almost 2,000 people, including 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 hostels 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.
Despite the fact that the political battle is focused on the distribution of migrant adults - 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 the oenages "can do no more" with the management of more than 4,400 migrant minors who are under the tutelage of the autonomous community, and that is why he hopes to close in a couple of weeks a proposal for a law they are working on, which - basically - what it aims for is a mandatory distribution between regions and which is not voluntary, as it is currently.
