Two boats with a total of 81 irregular immigrants on board arrived yesterday afternoon, within an hour, on the eastern coast of the island of Lanzarote, as reported yesterday by the island director of the State Administration, Marcial Martín.
On the one hand, the first barge, with 41 irregular immigrants who were arrested, was towed around 5:45 p.m. to the Varadero de Puerto del Carmen. This first boat was spotted 15 minutes earlier by a recreational boat from the parascending Club, when it was sailing about 2 miles from the town of Playa Chica, in the municipality of Tías. The boat transferred the boat to the Varadero, where five patrols of the Civil Guard arrived and intercepted the immigrants.
According to data provided by the Insular Coordination Center of the NGO Spanish Red Cross in Lanzarote, which sent an emergency ambulance to the scene, the immigrants who arrived in the south of the Island were all men, of sub-Saharan origin, and arrived at the port of Puerto del Carmen without serious health problems, although the health services had to evacuate one of the clandestine immigrants to the General Hospital, as he was suffering from severe lower back pain, while two other immigrants had to be transferred to the Tías Health Center for a medical examination, both presenting symptoms of exhaustion and muscle pain.
On the other hand, while these 41 immigrants were being attended to, another 40 who were traveling in another boat ended up arriving around 6:30 p.m. to Costa Teguise, specifically to Playa de La Disa, an area between the Inalsa desalination plant and the Unelco plant, having been spotted when they were sailing about 5 miles from the coast of Lanzarote, north of the Port of Los Mármoles. It was a fisherman who was fishing in the area who spotted this second boat, and who quickly alerted the State Security Forces.
After receiving the alert, the Civil Guard sent a patrol boat to the place where the boat was located, whose 40 occupants, all adult males, except one who could be a minor, were transferred to the area of Las Caletas, in the municipality of Teguise, to which they arrived at 6:57 p.m. Upon arrival at the abrupt area of Las Caletas, the immigrants were attended by Red Cross volunteers, although their state of health was good.
After being attended by the health services, the immigrants were transferred to the Foreigners Internment Center located at the Guacimeta airport, from where everything suggests that they will be deported to their countries of origin immediately, or otherwise, transferred to the El Matorral Center, in Fuerteventura, a site with much more space than the one in Lanzarote, which still does not meet minimum conditions and in which until yesterday, before the arrival of the last two boats, already housed another 11 "undocumented".
The tranquility and good condition of the sea these days favors the arrival of boats from the coasts of Western Sahara to Lanzarote, an island that until yesterday and during the [first half of 2005->http://www.lavozdelanzarote.com/article.php3?id_article=847] had received less than half of the immigrants who arrived on its coasts in the first six months of last year. With the 80 arrests yesterday, the number of irregular immigrants who have arrived in Lanzarote so far this year has already reached 165, while yesterday, as has been the trend in recent months, no skipper could be identified either.
