On Saturday, 14 November, 1,488 migrants arrived in Spain’s Canary Islands. This is the highest number of people rescued in a single day since 2020.
Spain’s maritime rescue service reported this, Reuters reports.
According to the service, the coastguard rescued people from 14 boats. The previous one-day record was set on 7 November 2020, when 1,461 migrants were rescued near the Canary Islands.
One of the boats was carrying 240 people, including 12 women and 36 children. All of them were taken to the island of El Hierro.
On 15 November, Spain’s Minister for Territorial Policy, Ángel Víctor Torres, is due to visit El Hierro to discuss the sharp rise in the number of migrants.
In early November, Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez agreed to convene an emergency meeting of the Interdepartmental Commission on Immigration due to the sharp increase in the number of migrants arriving in the Canary Islands.
- It was previously reported that Spain plans to move away from standard migration procedures and tighten asylum application rules for migrants who arrived in its North African enclave of Ceuta during a mass border crossing in July.