The Spanish Police Confederation (CEP) union has demanded an "urgent increase" in the volume of jobs assigned to the Arrecife Local Police Station. Thus, in a press release issued on Monday morning, it pointed out that "the very significant growth" of crime in the capital of Lanzarote. According to union data, the number of crimes recorded in the capital of Lanzarote is, "the highest in the last seven years", it should also be noted that the population of this city is also the largest in its history.
In this sense, the CEP has also requested an increase in staff to deal with the arrival of migrants arriving on the island by irregular maritime routes. For example, it states that the National Police officers, responsible for the protection of migrants during the first 72 hours, attended to 300 people on February 10 and 11.
The union has highlighted that the catalog of positions of the Local Police Station, the maximum number of police officers who can be assigned to it, has only experienced "a growth of 14 places in the last seventeen years." Thus, "that 8.48% more available vacancies is absolutely insufficient to meet the demands of the society of Arrecife, which, only in 2024, had to suffer an increase of 12.8% in the number of known criminal offenses compared to the previous year."
That "striking growth" of crime is "the largest in the last eight years" and exceeds "very widely the one registered in 2024 by the island (+4.19%), the province (-0.9%) and the Canary Islands as a whole (+2.9%)." This scenario, according to the official data published by the Ministry of the Interior, "is even more worrying if we take into account that of the 2,788 crimes known in 2024 in Arrecife, 92.75% corresponds to conventional crime, with a very sensitive growth of thefts (+27.5%), vehicle thefts (+29.6%), crimes against sexual freedom (+34.7%) or serious and less serious crimes of injuries and tumultuous affray (+20.4%)."
On the other hand, the increase in the catalog of "only nine officers" since 2008 at the border post of that Local Police Station "contrasts powerfully with the volume of activity at the César Manrique Airport in Lanzarote, which in 2024 reached a record figure of 8.71 million passengers (6.1% more than in 2023) and which so far in 2025 has increased that activity rate by 4.4%, with more than 701,000 passengers who greatly exceed the figures of last year." It is evident that in order to attend to police competences in matters of immigration and borders in that infrastructure, a considerable strengthening of the available personnel is required and not, as until now, a slight increase of only nine vacancies in seventeen years.
The repeated requests of CEP to the Superior Headquarters of the Police of the Canary Islands and to the General Directorate of the Police (DGP) have "always focused on urging two measures that solve the root of the problem of this staff and that allow to attend with guarantees the migratory pressure and crime."
Arrecife needs "urgently" reinforcements and a permanent CATE
On the one hand, "the very significant increase in the vacancies that are offered in the annual movement of police officers from other staffs to the Canary Islands. That has already been achieved, since the intention of the DGP is to release up to 51 places so that as many agents can apply for them and move to work in Arrecife. This is the highest figure in the last fifteen years and will allow, depending on the number of police officers who apply to go to the island, to give oxygen to a Police Station that urgently needs those reinforcements."
The other demand of CEP is the increase of the catalog of jobs of that police staff, so that "more agents can have destination there and that it is not necessary to move other reinforcement units to assume, as it happens at present with the Police Intervention Unit, the security of the Temporary Attention Center for Foreigners (CATE), or the tasks of reception and police treatment every time there is a massive arrival of boats", taking into account also that those additional resources -in the field of Immigration and Borders and Scientific Police, for example- "must be mobilized from other islands and are not available in real time when, as this week, there is such a considerable rebound in migratory pressure."
In short, from CEP we demand from the Ministry of the Interior "much more real commitment with the colleagues of the Local Police Station of Arrecife and with the society of that municipality of Lanzarote." Likewise, they have indicated that "with more personnel not only will it be possible to attend to all the operative demands of the different police specialties but also, it will be done with greater security and protection." In addition, "that same commitment is what would allow the tension to which the police are subjected due to the increase in crime figures and, apart, due to migratory flows to decrease and not negatively impact the work environment and their health." And that same effort is what should allow "to have a CATE in conditions, with a fixed character and in a similar way to the one already existing in Las Palmas or the one projected in Granadilla de Abona."
