El Hierro declares emergency over migrant arrivals
Authorities on El Hierro, one of Spain's Canary Islands, have declared an emergency and asked the government in Madrid for help after a surge in migrants and refugees arriving by boat, Al Jazeera reported. The island has about 11,400 residents.
The island's governing council, known as the Cabildo, made its emergency declaration on 6 November. The Cabildo reported that 8,000 people had arrived on the island in the five weeks before that declaration, according to RTVC. Alpidio Armas heads the governing council.
Local authorities said more than 3,300 people had arrived on about 30 boats since the start of November. Separately, maritime rescue services rescued 3,261 migrants and refugees off the Canary Islands in the first six days of the month, Al Jazeera reported.
Fernando Clavijo, the regional leader of the Canary Islands, described the migration situation as absolutely unsustainable. Buses have been diverted to migration operations, and medical staff have been brought in from other islands.
The arrivals have come with deaths at sea. Reuters reported that at least seven migrants died in the waters off Spain's Canary Islands on 2 November, and that more than 380 people were rescued that day. Al Jazeera reported that two people were found dead on a boat heading for the islands in the week to 8 November, and that five others are believed to have died during the voyage. It also reported that at least nine migrants or refugees had died off the islands in recent weeks.
The scale of the flow is part of a longer pattern. Al Jazeera reported that more than 46,000 migrant and refugee arrivals were recorded in the Canary Islands in 2024, a record. Spain's Ministry of the Interior has counted 13,327 irregular migrants and refugees arriving by sea between January and October of this year, 5.5 percent fewer than in the same period last year.
Further along the route, Senegalese police said on 8 November that they had intercepted 142 migrants off Dakar, including women and young children.
