This 2024 has been marked by intense negotiations regarding the reception of unaccompanied migrant minors arriving in Spain, conversations that have not achieved a solution for these young people in a record year of irregular arrivals to the Canary Islands.
An agile and effective referral of these children and young people from arrival areas such as the Canary Islands to the rest of the communities has been a historical demand of the archipelago, which has gained more strength in recent years after a rebound in arrivals by sea to the islands that has left almost 5,500 children and young people under the tutelage of the Canary Islands.
A frustrated legal reform
In his pact with CC to invest Pedro Sánchez, the PSOE committed to initiating a legislative solution in this matter and, for the first time, a modification of the immigration law has been proposed - specifically, its article 35 - to establish a mandatory mechanism for referring minors to other communities.
A system agreed between the central government and the Canary Islands as an alternative to the current one, based on voluntary distributions of a few hundred of these young people agreed with the communities in the Sectoral Conference and which, in practice, is not fulfilled.
In June, the Government agreed with the Canary Islands on this legal change and reached an agreement in principle with the Canary Islands to carry out this modification, but a month later the law failed to pass its consideration due to the lack of support from Vox, Junts and the PP.
Since then, Alberto Núñez Feijóo's party has been reluctant to support a measure of this type - despite governing in the Canary Islands together with Coalición Canaria - and has raised multiple demands, many of which have been assumed by the Government to achieve a consensus.
On the other hand, the PP has received pressure from Vox during all these months, which flatly rejects the reception of unaccompanied migrant minors.
In fact, the agreement reached last July at a Sectoral Conference on Childhood and Adolescence held in Tenerife for the distribution of 347 minors from the Canary Islands and Ceuta through the voluntary mechanism currently in force ended with the rupture, by Vox, of the five autonomous governments that it shared with the PP.
While the political discussions were prolonged, the saturation in the Canary Islands has led to complaints about the unsanitary state of some centers for minors and the images of the Arguineguín pier from 2020 were recalled again, as tents were reinstalled on the docks to temporarily house the new arrivals, this time in Lanzarote and El Hierro.
The Government of the Canary Islands tried to find its own solution by approving a protocol that attributed the first responsibility for the children to the State, but the measure has been suspended preventively by both the Superior Court of Justice of the autonomous community and the Constitutional Court.
The latest move by the Canary Islands in this matter has been to put on the table a proposal in the form of a decree law to make a specific distribution of young people in order to alleviate the arrival areas without reforming the immigration law, a formula that, according to the Government of the islands, could have the support of Junts.
New record of arrivals by sea and thousands of deaths
Spain ends 2024 with figures for the arrival of migrants by sea that have exceeded the record set in the 2018 crisis, when 57,498 immigrants entered the country in boats, 95% of them through the Strait of Gibraltar and the Mediterranean coast.
This year, again, the focus is on the Canary Islands. For the fifth consecutive year, the islands are the main entry point for irregular immigrants to Spain and the Canary Route marks unprecedented records, with 43,737 people rescued until December 15, 3,827 more than those registered in all of 2023 (39,910).
The situation in the Canary Islands is being watched with attention by the European Union, which has expressed its concern through several commissioners and senior officials of Frontex, the border agency.
It is not only - nor fundamentally - a question of numbers: despite being at historical highs, the Canary Route is still far from the records of the Mediterranean (62,034 entries until November through the central Mediterranean and 63,935 through the eastern Mediterranean).
It is a problem of trends. Until the end of the third quarter, the traffic of immigrants through the central Mediterranean had fallen by 64%, while that of the Atlantic Route had doubled, according to Frontex. And also of mortality: there is no official record, but all approaches to the Canary Route are alarming.
According to UNHCR, until October 872 people had died trying to reach the islands by boat or canoe, almost as many as in the central Mediterranean, 946, only that through this last route almost 11,000 more people moved until that date (33,226 compared to 55,568).
The United Nations agencies always specify that their figures for deaths and disappearances are only the tip of the iceberg. In fact, the NGO Caminando Fronteras, which closely follows the migratory routes to Spain, estimates that from January to May alone 4,808 people died in the Atlantic; that is, one every 45 minutes.
In September, El Hierro witnessed the most serious tragedy that has occurred in the Canary Islands in 30 years of boat arrivals: 63 people died just four kilometers from the coast when their canoe sank while it was already being assisted by a Maritime Rescue boat. 27 people survived and only nine bodies were recovered.
Pakistanis, Afghans, Syrians or Yemenis on the Canary Route
This year, there have been fundamental changes in the Canary Route: Mauritania has replaced Senegal as the main departure point for canoes; Malian refugees, who are fleeing a country ravaged by years of war and jihadism, are now the majority among those arriving in the islands (13,273, until December 1); and there are signs that certain traffics from the Mediterranean are turning to the Atlantic.
In fact, since the end of the summer, there is almost no week in which people from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria or Yemen do not arrive in El Hierro by canoe, people who until now were trying to enter Europe through Greece or through the dangerous route from Libya to Italy.
Also noteworthy this year in the migratory routes to Spain is the Algerian Route, which mainly affects the Balearic Islands.
The data published by the Ministry of the Interior only distinguish two large categories, the Canary Islands and the rest of Spain, so they transmit an image of the situation on the Mediterranean coast where only a global drop of 2% in arrivals is appreciated.
However, the accounts kept by UNHCR do allow us to see what is happening in more detail: one in three immigrants who have entered Spain by boat through the Mediterranean has done so through the Balearic Islands (5,734 out of 16,537), whose Government has already publicly expressed its fear of having problems like those already suffered by the Canary Islands.
There is another piece of data that corroborates this trend: according to UNHCR, after the Malians (27.2%), Algerians are the second largest contingent among those who have arrived in Spain this year (15.1%), ahead of Moroccans (15.1%) and Senegalese (13.9%).
Migratory pressure increases
On the other side of the Atlantic, in Mauritania, migratory pressure has increased this 2024. Arrests and expulsions of migrants reached 11,000 people at the end of October, compared to 9,500 in the entire year 2023, according to a Mauritanian security source told EFE.
There is no data on the number of migrants waiting in the country to cross to the Spanish islands, but they are generally of Senegalese, Malian, Guinean and Gambian nationality, this source said, who agrees that in recent months more distant nationalities have appeared, such as Pakistani, in new routes that are opening due to border control in North Africa.
The vast majority of Malians who arrive in Mauritania, fleeing the insecurity and poverty of that Sahel country, have refugee or asylum seeker status, and tens of thousands live in refugee camps.
This is the case of the Mberra camp, in the extreme southeast of the country, where according to data from UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, there were 113,743 people as of October 31, compared to 92,375 at the end of 2023.
The popular initiative to regularize half a million people reaches Congress
One of the milestones of this year in migratory matters is the arrival in Congress of a popular legislative initiative endorsed by more than 600,000 signatures to regularize in an extraordinary way the approximately half a million migrants who live without papers in Spain.
The proposal passed its consideration in Congress in April with the support of all groups except Vox and now the parties are debating in Committee the different amendments with difficulties in reaching an agreement on a definitive text.
In parallel, the Government has undertaken a comprehensive reform of the immigration regulations whose pillar is to facilitate, precisely, the regularization of undocumented migrants through the existing figure for this, the roots.
Through a reduction of deadlines and the flexibilization of requirements, the Executive estimates to regularize some 900,000 people in the next three years.
However, the promoters of the popular initiative have stressed the need to carry out the extraordinary regularization proposed equally, to provide coverage to many people that the reform leaves out by still not being able to meet the required requirements.
Transit visas alleviate pressure at Barajas
2024 began with Barajas airport as one of the most controversial focuses in terms of the Government's migration policy, in view of a saturation in its asylum rooms, where hundreds of applicants for international protection were crowded in unsanitary conditions.
The situation eased at the beginning of the year thanks, among other measures, to the imposition of transit visas to countries such as Kenya and Senegal, a list to which other countries such as Sudan, Chad, Central African Republic or Egypt have been added this 2024 under the criticism of entities such as CEAR, which considers that this measure, in practice, hinders access to asylum.
The Madrid airport has been the protagonist of another controversy this year, in this case for the retention in its facilities of dozens of Saharawi asylum seekers who, against the rejection of entities and against the criteria of UNHCR in many of the cases, ended up being deported to Morocco.
In addition, this 2024, the European Parliament has approved the European Pact on Migration and Asylum, highly criticized by social entities defending the rights of migrants because it opens avenues to greater externalization of borders, more detentions of migrants and new obstacles in asylum procedures
Its entry into force is scheduled for 2026 - although several countries, such as Spain, have asked to advance its date of application - and the regulatory modifications that it will entail are not yet known, but the Government has already advanced that it will not increase the deprivation of liberty for migrants and will opt for alternative measures to internment and a reinforcement in the reception system.
