The Government of the Canary Islands has once again received a refusal from the Ministry of Defense to transfer three military spaces in Lanzarote, El Hierro and Fuerteventura to, if necessary, "respond in the first instance" to unaccompanied migrant minors arriving in boats and canoes.
This was reported at a press conference by the spokesperson for the Canarian executive, Alfonso Cabello, after the meeting of the Regional Government Council.
Cabello has detailed that these three spaces in question are the Marqués de Herrera barracks, in Lanzarote, the Anatolio Fuentes in El Hierro and El Fuerte, in La Palma.
The spokesperson for the Government of the Canary Islands has explained that Defense's argument is that it needs these facilities for support and essential logistical and tactical needs to face crisis situations.
And he has replied that the Canary Islands is experiencing "a crisis situation, especially a humanitarian one", so having these spaces "in case it is necessary" to welcome migrants in them would be "good news".
He has lamented that the Ministry of Defense "does not address the humanitarian emergency" with its refusal to cede these spaces.
Alfonso Cabello has indicated that the Ministry of Social Welfare is working to enable more spaces, beyond those 80 centers in which it serves more than 6,000 unaccompanied migrant minors, and has added that "exceptional measures" are not ruled out given the need to have reaction capacity "in real time" in the face of peaks in the arrival of boats and canoes to the Canary coasts.
Asked about a center in Santa Úrsula (Tenerife) where these children could be housed, he indicated that these facilities have an unfavorable report from the town hall of that municipality because "it does not meet" the necessary conditions.
Furthermore, the spokesperson for the Canarian executive has valued the "unanimous support except for Vox" for the agreement to reform the immigration law when distributing migrant minors among the autonomous communities, and has said that they harbor "many expectations" in the meetings that the president, Fernando Clavijo, will hold with the parties in Congress starting tomorrow.
He has insisted on the request of the Government of the Canary Islands that this modification be made via a decree law because it would come into force "immediately", and then there would be room to seek the necessary support for its validation in Congress within the ordinary period of sessions.
"We believe that the decree law is the only alternative, because the other - processing it as a bill - may take months to respond to a situation that is already very complicated," Cabello proclaimed, who has appealed to take advantage of "this window of opportunity".
"The Canary Islands needs an urgent response, now, better today than tomorrow," he concluded.
Asked about the attitude of the parties, he stressed that at least in the Canary Islands, everyone, except Vox, understands that the reform of the immigration law "is the only possible way in the situation we are in", and that this is the "clear objective" with which the regional government, formed by CC and PP, will attend the meetings with the groups in Congress
