The mayor of Arrecife, Yonathan de León (Popular Party), has requested this Friday that an investigation be opened and the "docking permit" be clarified for a tugboat that was traveling from Senegal to Belgium and that reported that it found 49 people traveling clandestinely in the middle of the voyage.
The mayor of the capital of Lanzarote has stated that he "suspects" that the decision adopted by the Spanish Government, requesting a high bond to allow docking in the port of Arrecife may be linked to the presence of Pedro Sánchez in Lanzarote, where he is vacationing at the La Mareta Palace.
Yonathan de León, in statements to the media made this Friday near Puerto de Naos, "has shared the municipal fear, and that of the citizens of Lanzarote, that we are really facing a ship dedicated to the illegal transfer of migrants from the coasts of Africa to the Canary Islands." For the mayor of Arrecife, the "information disseminated from the Government Delegation in the Canary Islands that they are stowaways may be to silence the social alarm" that he has assured "exists in Lanzarote and other Canary Islands in the face of the permanent disembarkation of migrants in Canary ports, including Arrecife."
The mayor has expressed his concern that this ship, originating in Dakar, "could be a mother ship for the transfer of migrants from Africa to the Canary Islands." Yonathan de León has lamented that the Government Delegation "does not inform local authorities about this reality when the first information is already confusing when talking about "tugboat and other cargo sources."
The mayor has stressed that humanitarian aid must be provided, but that "the Government Delegation in the Canary Islands should not say that they are stowaways when we may be facing a situation of a mother ship transporting migrants from Africa." "If they were stowaways, the mayor highlights, they could request international asylum upon disembarking in Arrecife," he assured.
It so happens that this ship is asked for a bond to dock in Lanzarote, and others that have arrived recently have been "opened the entrance" and others, being closer to ports in Senegal, Mauritania and Morocco, the authorities of the Government of Spain "send ships to take them to the port of Arrecife, a city that has the CATE (Temporary Foreigners Assistance Center) in an area that contravenes the urban regulations of the City Council, and suffers floods as it is in a flood risk area."