After six days of crossing, with the drinking water reserves exhausted and the bottom of the canoe full of water, Mohmed (the name of the miners is not made public) heard screams in the moonless night and the sound of two bodies falling to the water. . According to this 15-year-old Gambian, two crazy people jumped into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean. The next day, the rest of the passengers, who left Senegal, landed in the Canary Islands. “Every night since he arrived two weeks ago, we hear his screams.”says Gabriel Orihuela, director of the center for unaccompanied foreign minors (menasaccording to its Spanish acronym) from Tindaya, in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, where the young man is followed by a psychologist.
Perched on the hills of the Tafira neighborhood, south of the Canary Islands capital, the Tindaya center welcomes, in an old abandoned monastery, eighty young people between 12 and 18 years old, mainly Malians, Senegalese and Moroccans. About twenty of them have just been transferred from the small island of El Hierro, where hundreds of immigrants arrive every week. This morning at the end of September, young people leave class and chat in the hallways, play FIFA on their cell phones, run to the canteen or go to the mosque installed near the patio.
They warmly applaud Gabriel’s hand as he passes by. “In the morning they take Spanish classes, in the afternoon activities are organized. Those under 16 years of age are educated in schools in Las Palmas, others can follow vocational training, learn to write a CV, do internshipsexplains Mr. Orihuela. Ideally, to adequately care for these young people, this center should not accommodate more than fifty, because we try to recreate an environment as close as possible to family life and encourage their integration. But we accept eighty, because the priority is to cover the emergency. »
Controversial protocol
between 1Ahem Between January and September 30, according to figures from the Ministry of the Interior, more than 40,000 immigrants arrived in the Spanish archipelago located off southern Morocco. This is double the figure recorded during the first nine months of 2023. Between 8% and 10% of them are unaccompanied minors, automatically placed under the supervision of the Canary Islands government and distributed in specialized centers.
However, with 5,500 unaccompanied minors housed in the archipelago, this system is “on the brink of collapse”says Alfonso Cabello, spokesman for the Canary Islands Government, a coalition between the regionalist Canary Coalition party (CC) and the Popular Party (PP, right). “In thirteen months we have gone from twenty-eight centers to 81 and we have many difficulties finding specialized personnel, educators, psychologists, translators. This represents 14 million euros per month and we have not yet received funds from central government this year. We have the obligation to offer a life project and social integration to these young people, which is why we ask for a stable solution and adequate financing. »
You have 67.93% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
