At the beginning of the evening, two more boats with “around” 150 people on board were on their way to El Hierro, a rescue spokesman added, awaiting final figures.
According to the emergency services, these migrants, originally from sub-Saharan Africa, were being cared for by the authorities, who have been facing a significant increase in arrivals in this archipelago off the northwest coast of the African continent for several weeks. On Tuesday, 280 migrants arrived in El Hierro aboard a single boat, the largest number of passengers ever to arrive on a single boat, according to the maritime rescue service. More than 1,200 migrants arrived on the small island with 11,000 inhabitants last week.
These massive arrivals led Spanish authorities to transfer almost 500 migrants from the island of El Hierro, where authorities are overwhelmed, to Tenerife on the night of Thursday to Friday.
Informal summit in Granada
These new arrivals come as European leaders gather in Granada, southern Spain, for an informal summit where one of the main topics will be the thorny issue of immigration, which has been put on the agenda due to the recent influx of thousands of migrants to the small Italian one Lampedusa island.
On Wednesday, the ambassadors of EU countries agreed on a central regulation of the European migration reform, which introduces a binding solidarity mechanism between member states in the event that one of them is faced with “massive” arrivals of migrants, as happened recently in Italy case was. Poland and Hungary voted against the text, while Austria, Slovakia and the Czech Republic abstained.
Deadly shipwrecks
In recent years, the migration route to the Canary Islands has been particularly busy due to tightening controls in the Mediterranean. Shipwrecks often occur during this particularly dangerous Atlantic crossing. According to the latest figures from the Spanish Interior Ministry, 14,976 migrants arrived in the Canary Islands between January 1 and September 30, an increase of almost 20% compared to the same period in 2022.
Nongovernmental organizations regularly report fatal shipping accidents – which they say have an unofficial toll of dozens, even hundreds of deaths – in Moroccan, Spanish or international waters.