Mamadou, a malian who meets that morning 25 years ago, is bent on a wooden bench in the reception centre of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, a municipal shelter that gives food and shelter to those who need it. With the look lost in the ground and a tear in that part of the face in two, complains of a pain in the chest and explains that he wants to go to Barcelona. Take him to the doctor. It is the last remaining in the city of the twenty sub-saharan africa that came out of the center of internment of foreigners (CIE) of Tenerife at the end of October and stayed in the street, despite the fact that should have gone to a host program of an emergency. They had slept for weeks in a park in ruins. Little by little I have found place in a Red Cross shelter. It only remains to him.
“we need to redo the reception system in the Canary islands”, says the minister of Public administration, Justice and Security of self-Government, July Perez. On the brink of closing by 2019, this year they have come to the islands 2,571 people in 129 vessels, many more than in 2018. A transit in which have been drowned at least 154 people, according to data from the International Organization for Migration. The controls in the route of the Strait have increased the number of departures of boats from the West coast of the Atlantic, and some sources fear that you have african countries that are showing a greater laxity in order to receive EU funds.
Until the beginning of December, just had some 72 spaces in host integral, according to data from the Ministry of Labour, Migration and Social Security, stays of three months which may be extended for reasons of vulnerability and that can be accessed by those migrants who come by sea and are not returned to their country. Have psychological care, are taught the language, you try to facilitate their integration. That number has increased in recent days to 103 seats, and have been enabled also 546 host in emergency, managed by the Red Cross.
Mamadou has not had that luck. “We demand coordination, that when you are going to put someone on the street to warn us”, says a member of an NGO who prefers not to give his name. “Having to sleep under a bridge is a shame. It has been leaving people on the street and we have not been warned”, he adds. “The police bring them here and leave them in the door”, said yesterday a worker in the municipal shelter. “You may have failed, mechanisms of coordination and control”, supported from the Ministry of the Interior, the department in charge of asking you to enable the squares to Work.
The system was little prepared after a few years with a low influx of boats to the Islands. In these weeks, the Government of the Canary islands, 22 municipalities and the Cabildo insular of Fuerteventura have offered facilities to the Delegation of Government for new accommodations. “The spaces that we are full, we need more spaces,” says Antonio Rico, president of the Red Cross in the Canary islands. “We need more places for urgent humanitarian assistance”. Rico believes that the most functional is to concentrate the most of the places where you will be staying migrants. “The volunteers can’t spend the day moving from one site to another.”
But the Canary islands is only the first step in the journey of migration. Most of those who arrive want to continue down the peninsula or Europe. “The question is not only to continue opening spaces of emergency,” says Gonzalo Andradas, of the Spanish Commission for Refugee Aid. “You have to facilitate that, after evaluation, these people to continue their transit migration. In the Canary islands or give you a ticket for air travel or you stay here locked up”. Andradas remember that many of them have relatives on the mainland and in other countries of the EU. “In some cases, the State would not even have to pay for the trip, the family could do it.” “The solution does not pass through transfers to the mainland; the Government’s priority is to care for the immigrants that arrive in a situation of vulnerability”, says Job.
Mamadou continued yesterday at the shelter in Santa Cruz. There he received the visit of Ana Mendoza, a lady of the bourgeoisie santacrucera that care has been taken to the malian people since I saw them lying in a park. Took a picture together. And seemed more peaceful.
