Spain’s Canary Islands, off the west coast of Africa, have taken in about 4,587 boat migrants in the first six days of November, according to Canary Police figures given exclusively to ABC. A morning cutoff for November 1 through 6 put the tally at about 4,069 people on 46 boats — already about eight times the 458 people on four boats recorded in the same window last year.
From dawn Friday through 2:30 p.m. local time, eight boats arrived with about 906 people aboard. Officials still had no estimate for how many were on one of those boats. More than 500 further arrivals in about five hours that morning took the running total to about 4,587.
El Hierro, an island of about 12,000 residents, has been the main landing point, with about 2,619 people arriving on 27 boats by November 5, according to figures confirmed by the islands’ 112 emergency service. That cut does not include about 1,100 arrivals on November 6. The island’s hospital and emergency services are saturated.
Fernando Clavijo, president of the Canary Islands, said the situation on El Hierro is “absolutely unsustainable” and appeared set to worsen. He is demanding talks with Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez.
At least nine migrants have died off Spain’s Canary Islands and a critically ill baby was airlifted to hospital upon arrival in recent weeks, Reuters reported. Thousands of others have been brought ashore.
In the same November 1–6 window in 2024, 51 boats and 3,289 people arrived.
Spain’s Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska was in Dakar on Friday with Mouhmamadou Makhtar Cissé, pressing Senegal’s government over the departures.
Charter ferries moving arrivals off El Hierro cost €35,000 a trip. Operational sources told ABC that some arrivals are being flown to the Spanish mainland on state-paid charter flights managed by nongovernmental organizations including Accem and Cruz Roja, the Spanish Red Cross, without completing full identification triage.
