Over 1,600 Migrants Reach Spain’s Canary Islands, 1 Dies

Migrants from a group of 1300 rescued from different boats remain in the port of Arguineguin while being cared for by the Spanish Red Cross and the National Police on the Spanish Canary island of Gran Canaria, on Oct. 25, 2020. (Desiree Martin/AFP via Getty Images)

MADRID—More than 1,600 migrants have either been rescued at sea or reached Spain’s Canary Islands in small boats over the weekend, emergency services for the archipelago said Sunday.

The body of one person who had died during the perilous journey was recovered by rescuers in waters near the island of El Hierro, the Canary Islands emergency services said. Another person was airlifted by helicopter to a local hospital for an unspecified health problem.

The route to the islands from western Africa, which at its closest point in Morocco is 100 kilometers (about 60 miles) away, has seen an increase in traffic this year after the European Union funded Morocco in 2019 to stop migrants from reaching southern Spain via the Mediterranean Sea.

The Canary Islands have received over 11,000 migrants so far this year, and the Atlantic route has become the deadliest seaborne path to reach Europe with more than 600 confirmed dead of missing people, according to the U.N. Refugee Agency.

Arrivals in 2020 are still low compared to the 30,000 migrants who reached the islands in 2006. But they are at their highest in over a decade since Spain stemmed the flow of sea arrivals to just a few hundred a year through deals with West African countries.