Spain pledges €50m for Canary Islands migrant surge

Spain is readying a €50m (R1bn) aid package to help the Canary Islands cope with an "extraordinary migration flow", Spain's acting migration minister said on Thursday.

The aid will also support more than 4,000 unaccompanied children and teenagers under the care of local authorities.

Between January 1 and October 15 this year, the islands in the Atlantic received 23,537 migrants, an 80% increase from the same period last year, according to official data.

Since the beginning of October around 4,000 migrants are reaching the Canaries each week. If that pace continues, the archipelago, which lies around 100km off Africa's west coast, could exceed a record set in 2006 when almost 32,000 migrants reach the islands.

On Thursday, 59 migrants, including 11 women and a baby, were taken to Arguineguin port in Gran Canaria after being rescued from a dinghy, a Reuters witness reported.

They were among more than 200 people who on Thursday reached the islands after 800 were rescued the previous day, according to the emergency services.

During a visit to El Hierro, the westernmost and tiniest island, migration minister Jose Luis Escriva said the situation was "unprecedented", and El Hierro in particular was experiencing an "extraordinary flow".

Escriva said the government pledged there will be no more than 6,000 migrants in the Canary islands at any given time, with additional arrivals transferred to the mainland.

"When we have lower arrivals, migrants stay on average a month and a half in the islands. Now with average weekly arrivals of 4,000 migrants, the average stay is a week and a half," he said.

The Atlantic migration route to the Canary Islands, typically used by sub-Saharan African migrants trying to reach Spain, is one of the world's deadliest. At least 559 people,  including 22 children, died in 2022 during attempts to reach the Canary Islands, according to data from the UN international organisation for migration.

Reuters