The Council of Formentera, chaired by Llorenç Córdoba, will restore the powers of guardianship of unaccompanied foreign minors given the wave of menas arriving by boat this year on the small island of Pitiusa and the impossibility of meeting the financial expenses linked to their care and subsistence, which this year will amount to fifth of the budget of the island institution.
The reason why we began the procedures for restoring powers concerning minors to the Department of Social and Family Affairs of the Regional Executive is essentially economic: the cost of guardianship of the 80 minors welcomed this year is close to 8 million euros per year, more than considerable amount for a Consell whose The general budget for 2024 is 43.5 million euros.
In other words, in Formentera, one in five public euros will be allocated this year to support this young population of the Maghreb affected by the flooding of boats from which the Balearic Islands are suffering so far in 2024.. The return of powers to the Government it won’t be immediatesince it will be necessary to carry out a whole series of regulatory changes this will not be resolved overnight.
According to the Consell, this year have arrived towards this small island of Pitiusa around 1,500 people on a total of 95 boatsthe coast of Formentera being one of those with the highest number of interceptions of these vessels in the entire Balearic Islands, approximately half of the total.
Last year, only 11 unaccompanied minors arrived in Formentera, which represented an expense for the island institution of just over a million euros, an amount that this year has been multiplied by no less of eight.
In these moments, Formentera City Hall has 80 unaccompanied foreign minors under its supervision and are responsible for the municipal budget.although they are not hosted on the island, as no space is provided for this purpose. It is for this reason that these minors are moved to other islands of the Balearic archipelago, such as Ibiza or Mallorca, where in towns like Esporles there have already been incidents and neighborhood protests against their accommodation in a chalet in a luxury resort.
The Consell rents apartments to house them there and they are managed by two foundations, managed by the Consell of Formentera with the costs of hiring all the staff dedicated to their care, in the case of educators, maintenance and disbursement of their transfers at tourist prices from They are not residents.
The figures for illegal immigration in Formentera speak volumes: if 489 immigrants arrived in 2023, this year there are already 1,500.
The devolution of these powers will only make the situation worse collapse that we are already experiencing in the ore reception centers of Majorca, who are already overwhelmed. It should be borne in mind that the Consell de Mallorca announced last September that it would ask the government to install tents in the old Barracks Sound All of Palma to welcome them.
A space on the outskirts of Palma that is periodically activated by the National Police in times of migratory crisis and on days when there is an avalanche of boats on the Balearic coasts to register immigrants, who barely spend a day, in the field stores installed in the barracks. So far, Son Tous has not hosted minors and the cost of using it as a permanent residence for these minors is unknown.
