four dead on the sidelines of a massive arrival of migrants on the Canary Islands

Four migrants died among a group of several hundred people rescued aboard four boats off the Spanish island of El Hierro, in the Canary archipelago, Spanish emergency services announced on Saturday, November 4. A new tragedy for these islands submerged since the start of the year by the arrivals of migrants.

Of four boats spotted on Friday, two were intercepted in the evening and then accompanied to the port of La Restinga, in the south of this small island of 11,000 inhabitants, the westernmost of the Canaries. In total, 254 migrants were on board, all in good health, the emergency services said on X (formerly Twitter).

In the third boat, which carried 238 migrants, rescuers took care of 13 people to transfer them to hospital. Two of them died despite the care provided. A fourth and final boat was rescued immediately, with two people dead on board. The number of migrants present on this last boat was not specified by the emergency services.

Significant increase in the number of migrant arrivals

According to the latest figures from the Spanish Ministry of the Interior, the archipelago saw the arrival of 30,705 migrants between January 1 and October 31, more than double the figure recorded over the same period in 2022. Among them, almost a quarter arrived at El Hierro, which has recently become the main gateway to Spain by sea.

In their exile, migrants seek to get as far away from the African coast as possible to avoid the coast guards. This number of arrivals, which far exceeds the reception capacity of this small island of 268 km2, has forced the authorities to transfer several hundred migrants to other islands in the archipelago.