Minister Ángel Víctor Torres has responded to the president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, that the responsibility of welcoming "with dignity" those who arrive in canoes in the Canary Islands must be shared by "all of Europe and all of Spain" and that they do not intend to turn the islands into "a prison for immigrants".
Before participating in a PSOE pre-campaign event at the newspaper Canarias 7, the head of Territorial Policy referred to Núñez Feijóo's criticism that the Government should transfer to the mainland immigrants arriving in El Hierro once identified by the Police, in order to alleviate the reception network of the islands.
"The problem must be avoided, not distributed throughout Spain and exported to Europe," the PP candidate for president of the Government wrote this Sunday on the social network X.
Torres, who chairs the Interministerial Commission on Immigration, replied in these terms: "If they say they cannot go to the rest of Spanish territory, they are clearly saying that the thousands of migrants arriving in El Hierro these days should stay in El Hierro. They are turning the Canary Islands into a permanent CATE, into a prison for immigrants. That is the proposal they have for immigration. It is not ours, logically."
The former president of the Canary Islands has stressed that this is not an interpretation made by the Government about the intentions of the PP and Vox, but something that both parties "say in all their interventions: immigrants stay in the border territories."
"That is dramatic for the Canary Islands," he warned.
Asked about the situation in the Canary Islands at the moment, with more than 12,000 immigrants rescued since October 1, most of them in El Hierro, Torres recalled that the Atlantic Route has "peaks" in a "cyclical" manner and that it is now experiencing a resurgence.
In a context like this, Torres has defended that a humanitarian response must be offered, because "they are human beings," and has censured those who, on the one hand, "lament the deaths at sea" and, at the same time, call those who arrive in canoes "invaders."
Looking ahead to the elections, he has asked the Canary Islanders "clearly" to be aware that "the proposal of the PP and Vox regarding immigrants is that they stay in the border territories."
An interministerial meeting in Madrid
This Tuesday, the Interministerial Commission on Immigration will meet in Madrid to address the situation in El Hierro, in an extraordinary meeting to which the presidents of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo (CC), and of the Cabildo of El Hierro, Alpidio Armas (PSOE), have been invited.
Despite the differences they have had in recent weeks, Torres has praised "institutional loyalty" with which the Government of the Canary Islands (PP-CC) is working on this matter and announced that new measures will be adopted in the Interministerial Commission.
"The Government of Spain will say what we are doing, what needs to be done, and what we can continue to do: economic aid, human resources, aid to the island of El Hierro in the face of a phenomenon that is cyclical, that is not new, that is not unprecedented, that we know and that on other occasions we have overcome. And how will we overcome it now? With a dignified response to human beings," he stressed.
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