Anass barely speaks Spanish, but at nine o'clock on Friday night he excitedly repeated a few words: “Thank you very much”. The other way to express his gratitude has been to melt into an embrace with one of the people who have accompanied him in the last 48 hours, and who have made it possible for the administration to finally listen to what he had been trying to say for almost five months: that he is a minor.
Since he arrived in Lanzarote on a small boat on October 10, Anass was treated as an adult and sent to one of the facilities managed by the Red Cross for adults. The National Police stated that his date of birth was June 25, 2000, apparently based on what the interpreter told them. However, the young man has a document with the Hague Apostille that indicates that he was born that day and that month, but in 2003, so he should have been referred to a juvenile center. Until today, he had not been able to get anyone to pay attention to him.
The change began last week, when an attempt was made to transfer immigrants to Fuerteventura. Some refused, fearing that the intention was to return them to their country, and in doing so they had to leave the Red Cross facilities. Among them was Anass, who found himself on the street, when he had been saying for months that he was a minor.
Days later he contacted a person he had met at that center and who no longer belongs to the NGO. There, volunteers from the Citizen Solidarity Network were launched, who this Friday decided to make their complaint public, after 48 hours knocking on all doors without success. Neither the visits to the National Police Station, nor the calls and writings to the Prosecutor's Office for Minors of Las Palmas for two days had been of any use.
"The publication has moved the definitive spring"
“The publication in La Voz de Lanzarote has moved the definitive spring. It has been thanks to the press. Until three in the afternoon, the Police said that they could not do anything and that the Prosecutor's Office for Minors should act; and the Prosecutor's Office said that they knew nothing about the matter. They passed the buck to each other,” they explain. “It was with the publication that things began to move, and the collaboration of the Ombudsman has been definitive.”
And it is that, given the lack of responses and given “the situation of helplessness of a minor”, the Solidarity Network had also addressed this body, which finally responded at around seven o'clock this Friday afternoon, a few hours after the news was published. By then, they had even filed a complaint in the Arrecife Duty Court, although they now plan to withdraw it, having finally found a solution.
“It seems that the Ombudsman has put everyone in their place from Madrid. He called us and told us that it would be resolved in half an hour and indeed”, they relate. In fact, less than 20 minutes later they received a call from the Police Station telling them to take the minor, that the papers were already being processed.
The Minors group of the Cabildo was also notified to pick him up and take him to one of the centers set up on the island, after spending five months in a warehouse with adults and the last few days on the street, sheltered only by volunteers.
Wave of solidarity
Since the news has been published, they have not only received the call from the Ombudsman and the Police Station. Their phones have also not stopped ringing with offers of help from many residents of the island. “People were calling us offering houses, offering rooms they had free... One lady offered to pay for the hostel for one night, another said she would pay for the following nights if she had to stay all weekend,” they say excitedly.
Finally it has not been necessary and they have achieved their objective: that the administration take charge of a young man whom they define as “a child”. “An absolutely overwhelmed child.” A “child” who “doesn't even seem to be 17 years old”, which is what is stated in the document that no one had paid attention to until now.