9 dead and 48 missing

The sinking of a canoe with 84 people on board occurred this morning in El Hierro This could become the biggest migration tragedy ever to hit the Canary Islands. in 30 years of boat arrivals.

The cayuco, leaving for the Canary Islands from Mauritania, It overturned when many occupants stood up during the rescue operations, carried out at night and in adverse weather conditions with wind gusts of around 37 kilometers per hour.

According to the first information available, Maritime Rescue has recovered nine bodies and search for 48 missingsince only 27 of the occupants of the canoe survived, which capsized while it was about to be rescued, seven kilometers from the coast.

In recent years, social organizations and the United Nations Organization for Migration (IOM) itself have reported canoe sinkings in the Atlantic, leaving dozens dead and no survivors. The biggest tragedy that occurred in the Canary Islands remains that of Los Cocoteros.

On February 15, 2009, a boat sank a few meters from the coast of Los Cocoteros, in Guatiza (Lanzarote). 25 of its 31 occupants drowned.

It is by no means the worst shipwreck in the history of the Canary Islands Route, which has swallowed up entire canoes with more than a hundred people on board, but after fifteen years, it is still the one with the most large number of deaths occurred in the Canaries. Islands.

The first shipwreck that shook consciences in the Canary Islands took place in 1999 in Morro Jable, in Fuerteventura, in which nine young people from Guelmin (Morocco) lost their lives, who had each paid 4,000 dirhams (70,000 pesetas in ‘era). 420 euros to change) for having boarded a six-meter boat which sank 300 meters from the coast and which was supposed to open the doors to the European dream.

Others may have happened before, but there were no witnesses or survivors to tell of their tragedy, no bodies to bury. If there were shipwrecks before, they were “silent”, as still happens so often on the Canary Islands Route.

This summer, in addition to filling 25 years since the first shipwreck with deaths in the Canary Islandswe also commemorated the 30th anniversary of the arrival of the first boat in the islands, which occurred on August 28, 1994, the day when two young Sahrawis crossed by sea the 96 kilometers that separate the island from Fuerteventura for the first time. .of the African continent.

Reactions

The President of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijodeplored the death of at least nine migrants when the canoe with which they were trying to reach the island of El Hierro overturned.

“Unfortunately, a new tragedy once again highlights the danger of the Atlantic route“, wrote the president of the Canary Islands on his official Twitter account, in which he urged Spain and the European Union to act “decisively” in the face of a structural humanitarian drama.

“They are children, women and men. Lives that are extinguished a few meters from the southern border of Europe,” lamented the head of the Canary Islands executive.

For his part, the Minister of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory, Ángel Víctor Torres, also regretted the death of the nine migrants. “We are facing a humanitarian drama, these people get on a boat and a canoe to try to have a chance at their life and unfortunately many lose it,” he said.

In statements to the media before participating in a meeting of the PSOE Regional Committee of the Canary Islands, Torres insisted that this event “we must raise awareness among those who want to build walls to the seato those who treat immigrants with contempt, to those who try to separate people based on the color of their skin.

“Just like the Canarians, in the middle of the last century, we had to leave our land to seek prosperity in America, now other Africans are doing the same, trying to seek prosperity in Europe”, declared the minister, for that what happened in El Hierro “shows that we are talking about people who, like today, on a day of immense pain, lose their lives at sea”.