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Migrants whisked from view in Canaries

The first taste of Europe for exhausted young African migrants arriving in the Canary Islands is of a brisk Spanish emergency operation designed to whisk them out of sight as quickly as possible.
A would-be immigrant sits in a hospital tent in the port of Los Cristianos on the Canary island of Tenerife, Spain, on Tuesday, after 94 immigrants were intercepted at sea in their small boat.
A would-be immigrant sits in a hospital tent in the port of Los Cristianos on the Canary island of Tenerife, Spain, on Tuesday, after 94 immigrants were intercepted at sea in their small boat.Arturo Rodriguez / AP
/ Source: Reuters

The first taste of Europe for exhausted young African migrants arriving in the Canary Islands is of a brisk Spanish emergency operation designed to whisk them out of sight as quickly as possible.

Blue screens were erected on a wharf in the Tenerife tourist town of Los Cristianos on Tuesday to hide boatloads of new migrants as they were attended by the Red Cross, given drinks and biscuits and changed into blue and  tracksuits.

A total of 294 West African men arrived in the space of about three hours. It was not an exceptional day given that more than 23,000 have made it to the Canaries so far this year, about five times the number in all of 2005.

The Spanish government is embarrassed by the surge in illegal immigration and wants to limit publicity which might make countries like Senegal reluctant to take their citizens back or encourage others to make the trip.

Local authorities in the Canaries also worry tourists will be put off by the sight of dehydrated African job-seekers staggering onto dry land in what is marketed as a paradise of sun, sand and Spanish hospitality off Africa’s coast.

Pictures only
Police kept reporters at a distance until the young men were ready to file onto coaches for the trip to a police station prior to internment and, the Spanish government hopes, repatriation. It was forbidden to speak to them.

A Dutch TV crew tried anyway, shouting “Do you speak English?” at one as he boarded the coach. The tall young African shrugged his shoulders and a policemen wagged his finger.

As the media is barred from migrant detention centers, the moment of closest contact is the few minutes when police allow photographs in a recovery tent.

The migrants sit exhausted, sipping apple juice and nibbling biscuits. They look too tired even to be happy they have survived a trip on which many drown or die of thirst.

Their hair is flecked grey from the salt splashed on a trip of more than 700 miles that lasts about 10 days. They blink often because squinting in the sun has hurt their eyes.

Muted welcome
The arrival on Tuesday of the first 96, who came on a Coast Guard vessel after being rescued from their damaged boat near rocky shore, attracted little attention despite the wharf’s proximity to a packed beach.

But a small crowd of locals and sunburnt tourists gathered to watch the others, who were towed past yachts into the harbor still aboard two scruffy open boats, around 15 yards long, which had carried them from West Africa.

A few were stretched ashore, but the others managed faltering steps onto dry land, swaying as if they were still at sea, dressed in tattered t-shirts, singlets and woolen caps.

“Go home!” shouted one bare-chested, middle-aged Spaniard.

Mostly the crowd was quiet as it watched what Spain’s interior minister, describing the forces behind migration, has called “a peaceful revolution against African poverty.”

Hotly debated issue
Once deeply-conservative Spain has accepted four million foreigners in the past decade with minimal social tension but the arrival of the African boat people has made immigration a hot political issue.

The government says it wants to avoid migrants losing their lives on a dangerous journey and that immigration must be legal.

Commentators note the debate has become most heated now that Spain is facing a large influx of black people.

Spain and its European partners have little idea of how to stop the flow from Africa, although the root cause is plain.

“It’s poverty, innit?” said one tattooed British tourist on the Los Cristianos wharf, turning away from the reporter.