The Canarian Coalition has shown its "forceful rejection" of the placement of "barracks for immigrants" that it claims the Ministry of the Interior plans to install in Puerto Naos. It considers that, given the similar experiences carried out in Gran Canaria and Tenerife by the Spanish Government, this Center for Identification and Retention of Non-resident Foreigners that it plans to "improvise" next to the National Police Station of Arrecife, "will not have the minimum conditions required for the accommodation of people.
In this sense, the spokesperson for the municipal group of CC in the Arrecife City Council, Echedey Eugenio, has stated that the location chosen by the Spanish Ministry "is the gateway to Arrecife" and that "it is not the most suitable place and does not meet the minimum conditions to house people."
Eugenio has elaborated on the position of the nationalist formation explaining that "the State already has an underutilized military barracks with space and conditions to fulfill that function."
Therefore, the Canarian Coalition asks both the mayor of Arrecife, Astrid Pérez, and the president of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Dolores Corujo, "to be forceful in rejecting such a measure and to urgently demand a pronouncement from the Port Authority, a Spanish public body attached to the Ministry of Development and responsible for the enclave in which it is intended to install the aforementioned migrant identification and retention center."
Likewise, the nationalists ask the president of the first island corporation that, taking advantage of the fact that the President of the Government of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, is enjoying part of his vacation on our island, request a meeting "so that the Spanish State reconsiders its position in this regard."
"The Canarian Coalition can understand that the PSOE, from Madrid, may interpret that the Canary Islands are a colony, that we are far away, in Africa, and as long as the problems are far from Madrid, they are fine; as demonstrated by the fact that the head of government, Pedro Sánchez, traveled to Ceuta to strongly condemn the kingdom of Morocco for the migratory crisis in the autonomous city last May, while Lanzarote – and the Canary Islands – with the same migratory problems as the Ceutíes, despite being required on numerous occasions, only comes on vacation," they point out.
However, the nationalists affirm that "in no way is the complicit silence of the PSOE in Lanzarote – and in the Canary Islands – understood" where they are "convinced that they will not raise their voices to denounce the lack of political action, the total absence of sensitivity and the abandonment of the Canary Islands, putting the interests of their party above the resolution of the archipelago's serious problems."
Therefore, the national secretary of Organization of the Canarian Coalition and councilor of the nationalist formation in Arrecife, David Toledo, has asked President Sánchez "to abandon the comfort of La Mareta and come and see how and where they want to house the immigrants."
In this regard, they recall that the Assembly of Support for Migrant People in Tenerife recently denounced that the people who are being held in these "improvised" enclosures by the Ministry of the Interior, "far from being welcomed humanely, are dehumanized by the institutions, which keep them in cages without exit, crowded in deplorable conditions that do not meet the minimum sanitary requirements to guarantee health and dignity," keeping them "detained without hygiene, information, advice or translation."