After one o’clock in the morning this Saturday (another hour in mainland Spain), an alert was activated for the maritime rescue patrol boat keeping watch in the port of La Restinga, on the Canary Island of El Hierro. A canoe with around 80 people on board sailed four nautical miles (approx. 7.5 kilometers) towards the island. The lifeboat’s departure alerted neighbors, who finished their drinks in the last bar in the harbor still open, and several of them, Red Cross volunteers, left their tables to change into their uniforms. In just ten minutes, a small device helped the shipwrecked people. An ambulance team attended to several of them, who disembarked unconscious and dizzy.
As the canoe docked, the survivors became nervous, their faces distorted. At the bow, some young people shouted “Boza, Boza!”, the usual cry of African migrants when they set foot on European soil. It was a tricky landing as most of the occupants could barely stand. “As soon as they warm up, they fall asleep,” explains one of the speakers at the reception.
The condition of some survivors is delicate. One of the boys said he fell off the boat and had been unconscious for two days. More than an hour and a half after disembarkation, he was still on the ground while volunteers called 112. El Hierro Hospital is a 45-minute drive from the dock.
This is the seventh cayuco to land in just 24 hours on the island of El Hierro, which has seen record boat arrivals for a week. Throughout Friday, including this last barge, they reached El Hierro, an island with almost 11,400 inhabitants, or almost 700 migrants. Some numbers are difficult to find in the records. The central government is acting quickly to transfer the new arrivals to the island of Tenerife, but after today the two improvised rooms where they will be housed are once again overcrowded. The sports center, where a tent has been set up, has space for around 300 beds and an abandoned monastery converted into accommodation has space for around 200. “There is no room for more. Last night some had to sleep on the floor because there was no bed for them,” he said, adding that he accompanied them in both facilities.
The barges are leaving the coast of Senegal, where the main opposition leader is imprisoned and his party is banned. Last June, the Senegalese experienced the height of some very serious unrest that claimed fifty lives in two years. The social outbreak at the beginning of the summer coincides with an intense exodus of young Senegalese to the Canary Islands, particularly to El Hierro and Tenerife. As of October 30, more than 15,000 people have arrived in the archipelago in precarious boats, a 20% increase compared to the same period last year.
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