The seven island councils of the Canary Islands demand from the central administration "urgent measures in the face of the migratory crisis" that affects the Canary Islands as the "southern gateway to Europe." In a statement, the president of the Cabildo of La Gomera and current president of the Canarian Federation of Islands (FECAI), Casimiro Curbelo, calls for "the updating of reception infrastructures, the provision of more surveillance and care resources, as well as the care of unaccompanied minors."
In an extraordinary assembly in which the president of the Government of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, and the ministers of Security, Social Welfare, and Ecological Transition participated, FECAI has agreed on an institutional declaration, together with the regional Executive, on the migratory phenomenon in the islands, which will be sent to the Government of Spain and European institutions.
Casimiro Curbelo emphasizes that it is necessary to "expose to the State the dimension that the migratory phenomenon affecting the Canary Islands as the southern gateway to Europe is having." Hence the demand from the island councils for the incorporation of "more technical and human resources, both for surveillance and for the care of people arriving on the Canary coasts."
Similarly, FECAI appeals to the "solidarity" of the rest of the autonomous communities in the reception of unaccompanied minors. Its current president denounces the "lack of planning from the State" regarding the "reception infrastructures" and cites as an example the one located in La Gomera, which is currently in a "state of abandonment."
In terms of fire prevention and extinction, the island councils have agreed to the "drafting of a report that brings together a diagnosis of the current protocols to implement improvements." The idea is to "determine mechanisms to reduce response time and the possibilities of activating reinforcement resources such as the UME without the need to raise the emergency to level 2."
FECAI has analyzed other measures such as the "increase in the duration of reinforcement campaigns with the aim of maintaining not only extinction tasks, but also articulating preventive actions throughout the year."
Furthermore, the island councils "urge the Government of Spain to exempt the Canary Islands from the administrative procedures that allow the renewal of the generation systems of the islands' thermal power plants."
"We must achieve an immediate response from the State that allows us to solve this problem that is very serious for each of the islands"
Curbelo argues that, given the "emergency situation" that exists regarding the island generation systems, "we must achieve an immediate response from the State that allows us to solve this problem that is very serious for each of the islands."
