DAKAR, Senegal — Spain's foreign minister met Sunday with Senegal's president in the West African country's capital Sunday to discuss the sudden increase of Senegalese migrants attempting to reach the Canary Islands by boat.
Spanish Foreign Minister Arancha González Laya met with President Macky Sall in Dakar to discuss migration and border cooperation between Spain, the European Union and Senegal. The country has become a major point of migrant departures even though it is around 950 miles (1,500 kilometers) away.
More than 18,000 people fleeing poverty, violence or other circumstances at home have arrived in Spain's Canary Islands this year, a 1,000% increase from the same period in 2019, and over 500 have died in the attempt. Around half of those arrivals — and most of the deaths — have been in the past 30 days, a spike that has strained resources on the archipelago.
"COVID is destroying African economies, as it has also had a huge impact on European economies, we knew that one of the consequences of this pandemic was going to be an increase in migration," González Laya told reporters after the meeting.
The Spanish minister rebuffed accusations of poor management and preparation by Spain in dealing with the migrant arrivals, resulting in thousands of them sleeping under tents on the dock of Arguineguin in the island of Gran Canaria for days, sometimes weeks, in unsanitary conditions.
Human rights groups have been warning about the reopening of the Atlantic route to the Canary Islands since late 2019, when arrivals began increasing slowly.
"It is very difficult to accuse a government or to say that a government is not sufficiently prepared to receive a very large amount (of people) in a very short period of time," she said.
Local rights groups in Senegal have been protesting the deaths of what they say are nearly 500 youths who died at sea in recent weeks attempting to reach European soil.
