More than 500 migrants arrive on Spanish Canary Islands in one day

Emergency services on the Spanish Canary Islands have said more than 500 migrants reached there in four large wooden boats in a span of 24 hours earlier this week.

One of the boats arriving on Tuesday was carrying 280 migrants, the islands’ emergency service said on X, formerly known as Twitter.

The state news agency EFE says it was the largest number in a single boat since human traffickers began to regularly use the Canary Island route in 1994.

Spanish Red Cross coordinator Jose Antonio Rodríguez Verona told The Associated Press he had not seen so many people in one boat since 2008, when 234 arrived in a single vessel.

Only five of the migrants needed medical treatment on arrival at the small port of La Restinga on the southern tip of Hierro Island.

Hundreds of other migrants were intercepted trying to reach other islands in the archipelago, located off the north-west coast of Africa, and elsewhere on mainland Spain in recent days.

Spain’s interior ministry says nearly 15,000 migrants reached the Canary Islands by boat from January 1 to September 30 2023.

That is a 20% increase from same period last year. Most departed from Senegal.