Idir Tiguit (Zagora, 2007) arrived by dinghy in Lanzarote on October 14, 2023 at just 16 years old along with 54 other people. He did so in the area of Las Caletas after a journey from Western Sahara without any member of his family, he was alone in a new country without knowing how to speak Spanish but with an immense desire to fulfill his dreams and achieve a better life.
In an interview with La Voz, Tiguit says that he decided to emigrate "to improve my future, get things I don't have and move forward". His dream has always been to be able to found his own aluminum business and he recognizes that, in Morocco, this was very difficult. For this reason, he decided to take a risk and come to Spain to start from scratch.
The young Moroccan says that he was very clear about his decision to come to Spain because "when someone wants something, they fight to achieve it." From some point on the coast of the Sáhara Occidental, he set sail for Lanzarote on a journey that lasted about eight hours.
During the crossing, Idir Tiguir remained calm and was tranquil. When he was able to reach the coast, in the area of Las Caletas, euphoria possessed him. "I was excited to get out of the sea because when you cross the sea in a dinghy with 55 people you don't know what's going to happen," he recalls. "I was very happy to have arrived at the place I want and start from scratch," he continues.
Desire to learn and train
After arriving ashore, being 16 years old, the young man was taken to the minors' center of La Santa, but one day later he was transferred to the Casa del Mar center, in Arrecife, where he stayed four months. "During my stay here I was not calm because what I wanted was to study and learn new things with training and courses," he indicates.
Later, he was transferred to another center in Argana Baja where he was able to start studying and learning Spanish, since he did not speak it. "It didn't cost me anything to learn it, for me it's easy, for others I don't know", he says in fluent Castilian. First, Tiguit began studying a course for the access test to a middle grade through the Chamber of Commerce of Lanzarote, where he began to learn, trained, and improved his Spanish.
After that, he took a maintenance course in Playa Honda and, after five months, managed to process the documentation to obtain the work permit and regularize his situation. Then he started working as a waiter in a hotel in Playa Blanca for ten months.
Its growth has been such that last week, Tiguit, along with the Lanzarotean Melody Armas, traveled to Madrid hand in hand with the Chamber of Commerce of Lanzarote and La Graciosa to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Talento Joven program. There, they met Queen Letizia and were able to converse with her majesty about their projects. After his time in this program, he worked as a translator in the Spanish course for foreigners of the entity itself.
About his participation in the program's tenth anniversary, the young man points out that he accepted the invitation from the Cámara, which led him to record a presentation video to tell his story of overcoming and to chat with doña Letizia "She saw my video and liked it, she told me to keep going, that I am strong and that I should keep fighting to achieve whatever I wanted," he reveals emotionally to La Voz. Furthermore, he highlights his good rapport with Melody Armas. "She is very good people," he assures.
His family, proud of his effort
Idir, alone on the island and being so young, missed (and misses) his family in Morocco. After several months working, he was able to travel to his country to visit them and reunite with them.
Throughout this hard and complex path, his family has shown him the pride they feel for him. "They are very happy for everything I am achieving... when I went to visit them they were very happy to see me and I also to see them because two years separated is a long time", he says emotionally.
"We don't come to look for problems, we come to work"
Despite the fact that Tiguit recognizes having suffered neither racist nor xenophobic attacks, the reality is that the dissemination of hate messages on social media has become a serious problem, fostered by a part of the political class.
"In all countries of the world there are good people and bad people, not only those who come in a dinghy," he/she states. "We do not come to look for problems nor to take anyone's job, we come to work and improve," he/she continued.
If he looked back and could give advice to that little Idir Tiguit, the young man says he would only tell him the following: "be a good person and keep fighting to get where you want so that your parents are always happy for you".
Tiguit does not want to conform with what he has achieved so far, but his goal is to found an aluminum company, something he saw as impossible in Morocco but that now, in Lanzarote, is much closer to achieving it.