The Cabildo closed the La Santa hostel this Wednesday as a reception center for immigrant minors and in the coming days will return the facilities to the company awarded its management, according to the Minister of Social Welfare of the institution, Maite Corujo.
"The good thing is that we are now going to be able to hand it over to the island, so that the island has a hostel again," said Corujo, who a week ago announced that she hoped to be able to hand over the La Santa hostel to the successful bidder shortly, although the agreement reached with the company for the temporary transfer of the facilities due to the declaration of a humanitarian emergency that was decreed after the increase in the arrival of boats did not end until March.
According to the Minister of Social Welfare, in Lanzarote there are still 16 immigrant minors, of whom two are still awaiting the resolution of tests to confirm their minority. However, these have been able to be transferred to the centers that the Cabildo has in Arrecife and Yaiza until they can be referred to other islands, so that the facilities of the La Santa hostel have been emptied. Thus, once the NGO that managed the reception of minors in these facilities collects its things, the space will be returned to the successful bidder again.
Although Maite Corujo has celebrated this news, she has acknowledged that it gives her "some vertigo" in the face of a possible new upsurge in boats. However, the Minister of Social Welfare has recalled that the Cabildo is working on the purchase of a home, which will become a minor's center, whose file is "in Contracting." "We are trying to be prepared, because it has been a very hard reality to manage, the experience has to serve for something, and I would not like the person who comes to find themselves in the situation in which we have been on this island," she said.
