The sinking of a canoe with 84 people on board that occurred this morning in El Hierro could become the biggest migratory tragedy to occur in the Canary Islands in 30 years of boat arrivals, above what happened on February 15 2009 in Los Cocoteros (Lanzarote), where 25 people died.
According to the first information available, Maritime Rescue has recovered nine bodies and is searching for 48 missing people, since 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 with dozens of deaths and no survivors, but to date the largest The 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, on Fuerteventura, in which nine young people from Guelmin (Morocco) lost their lives, who had paid 4,000 dirhams each (70,000 pesetas in at the time, 420 euros). in exchange) to board 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.
Yes, there have been shipwrecks before, they were “silent”, as still happens so often on the Canary Islands Route.
This summer, in addition to celebrating the 25th anniversary of the first fatal shipwreck in the Canary Islands, we 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 for the first times they crossed by sea the 96 kilometers which separate the island of Fuerteventura from the African continent
