Police Union Demands Government Add Resources For Canaries Immigration Wave

Over 1,800 immigrants have landed at the Spanish islands coasts over this past weekend alone as the National Police struggle to care for them and ask the government for humanitarian help.

The large influx of small boats and canoes arrived at the coasts of the Spanish autonomous community of the Canary Islands located around 62 miles from the African coast of Morocco.

According to local broadcast ‘Cadena SER’ more than 1,860 people arrived over the past weekend alone aboard 45 small boats recording daily numbers not seen since 2006.

Police union JUPOL Spokesperson Pablo Perez issued a statement saying a parking lot from a police station had to be repurposed as an area where some could sleep as they do not have the means to care for such a large number.

He said: “We believe it is absolutely necessary [to get] both material and humanitarian means not only for the safety of our colleagues but also for the safety of the immigrants.

“From JUPOL, we demand, once more, the Directorate General of the Police and the Minister of the Interior to take measures to solve this immigration crisis we are currently seeing.”

The Canary Islands are home to 25,589 British ex-pats, according to a 2019 study by the National Institute of Statistics (INE) and consists of eight main islands known for the natural beauty and volcanic landscape.

The island to take in the largest amount of boats was Gran Canaria with a reported 1,248 people as Tenerife took in the second most at 389, according to Cadena SER.