The spokesperson for Coalición Canaria, María Fernández, has criticized Pedro Sánchez for "not approaching" during his stay in Lanzarote to "learn about the reality experienced by migrants who survive and those who risk their
lives to rescue them.”
They recall that in the so-called Canary Route, more than 800 migrants died during the first semester and more than 1,000 migrants have been rescued in the last week.
Therefore, she urged the Ministry of Migration to "have a suitable reception device prepared for a foreseeable increase in migrant arrivals from September to prevent a repeat of
situations such as the one that occurred in November 2020, when more than 2,500 immigrants were crowded and in deplorable conditions in an improvised camp in the port of Arguineguín,
due to a lack of sufficient resources to accommodate them."
The nationalist spokesperson criticizes that Sánchez has not “suspended a few hours of his August rest to inquire about the situation in which these people arrive and about the work of Maritime Rescue and health professionals and volunteers at the Arrecife Dock” which "is only a few kilometers from where he rests.”
In July, the downward trend in the arrival of immigrants that had been registered in the first six months of the year was interrupted. Coalición Canaria explains that "the cayucos that are returning from Senegal
transport more immigrants, arrive more to the western islands and the deaths increase due to the greater danger of this route."
Fernández pointed out that the Canary Islands demands and needs constant involvement from the State: “not just occasional gestures”. “It is inadmissible”, she added, “that 17 years after the first cayucos crisis in the summer of 2016, the Spanish Government continues without giving a coordinated and constant response.
In this sense, she demanded that "the State intensify the work in the countries of origin of the immigrants urgently, given the proximity of the months in which good weather conditions intensify the
departure of boats and cayucos from Africa to the Canary Islands."