The president of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, assured that the tents installed on the docks of the islands are the “representation of a failure, a failure of immigration policy and a failure to be able to attend and refer in a dignified way”, he declared that “obviously there will be more” because “there is no other choice“if there is no response from the State.
In this regard, he recalled that the opposition “criticized him when he set up the tent in Lanzarote”, but he stressed that the State “had asked for the tent to be able to serve with dignity to the people who arrived last weekend. »
For Clavijo, “the ideal” is that “there are no tents, the ideal is that we have a system that can serve migrants in a reasonable but agile and dynamic way, but we do not have it because the Spanish government, well, this question is not “It has not given the resources, nor the attention, nor the political will that I think it should have had.”
In this sense, he admitted that he does not know if the Spanish government has already requested regional development funds from the European Union (EU) to use them in immigration matters, since the Minister of Territorial Policy, Ángel Víctor Torres, disagrees. He made it known. “I spoke with Minister Torres and asked him that when he sends the letter to Brussels, if he would be kind enough to send me a copy know. I have no news, I don’t know if this was requested or not.”
Anyway, Minister Torres, “if he was asked, he did not send me the letter, as he told me he was going to do, and if he did not send it to me didn’t send it, it’s because he didn’t ask for it. “.
Regarding the summoning of the PSOE and the PP to a meeting to continue negotiating the modification of the immigration law with regard to minors, he announced that Torres would appear this week in Congress to talk about the management of the dana, because he hopes that later this meeting can be arranged, to which he had committed himself.
The objective, he said, is to arrive at the Conference of Presidents, scheduled for December this year, if not with “the agreement found, which would be ideal”, at least “outlined”, because as the Canary Islands requested, during this conference, at which all the regional presidents and the President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, are present, “this is where we must close this legislative amendment“.
Clavijo was blunt, emphasizing that the European Union “has not failed, The one who failed is the Spanish government and the entire political class.” The Spanish government has not activated Frontex or aid, he said, and aid from Europe “has been used by the Spanish government to treat adults but not minors”.
“It must fall under its own weight”
For the Canarian president, the situation “is untenable” and must “fall under its own weight”. He also felt that “it cannot just be about money, it will be about commitment to the 5,800 minors“that there are currently approximately in the Canary Islands, so that in a country of 48 million inhabitants “they can be treated with dignity throughout” the territory.
In this sense, Clavijo asked to stop using migration “as a political weapon”, because he understands that “it is not necessary”.
