The historic arrival figures hide thousands of stories. Habibou Diop is one of more than 14,000 migrants who during this month of October have arrived to the Islands aboard boats. And he is one of the 7,000 welcomed on the Peninsula. Like most, he paid to be able to get on a canoe that would take him to a better world. He now dreams of finding a job that will allow him to support his family, who remained in Senegal.
Like each one of those who disembark on the Islands, He has his own particular story: 39 years old, with a wife and two children –one who is going to be one year old and another who is four–, and he worked as a day laborer in what was emerging. With the aspiration of finding another life, he handed over about 300,000 West African francs – equivalent to just over 400 euros – to get on a boat with 60 people on it, which sailed for four days and was located very close to The iron.
It’s been two weeks since I sailed from Bargny, a Senegalese coastal town like the one he is in now, Torrox (Málaga), where he was transferred last week by the central government from the Archipelago along with another 219 male migrants. They are mostly sub-Saharan Senegalese and are staying in a hotel, where they arrived between last Tuesday and Thursday.
The cayuco – in which they had food and water – was going to take them to El Hierro, but since the island was very busy due to the surge in migration, Maritime Rescue led them to Tenerife, where they were taken to a camp where they remained for five days. From there they were transferred to the Madrid Barajas airport and then to the town center of El Morche, in Torrox, on the Eastern Costa del Sol, where the Red Cross currently cares for them in an emergency facility. The organization offers them, among other services, basic notions of Spanish, given that the majority are French speakers.
Some of the fellow travelers in Diop’s cayuco managed to pay much more than him, up to 500,000 West African francs, while it cost others less. The Senegalese’s colleagues describe him as a very happy, communicative and close person.
Now his main objective is to find work to support his family, whom he had to leave behind and with whom he has been able to maintain telephone contact. He confesses that he doesn’t care what type of job it is. In Spain he has no family, nor other support networks of friends or acquaintances with whom he can leave.
Diop is grateful because he assures that, during all the phases he has gone through since arriving in Spain, he has been well received, they have treated him well and they have helped him whenever possible. And that, he points out, serves as vital experience to do the same with the people closest to him and whom he can help.
Between 5,000 and 6,000 migrants have been transferred in recent weeks from Canary Islands to the peninsula to decongest the first reception centers in the Archipelago in the face of the incessant arrivals of cayucos. More than 700 migrants have arrived in Andalusia, who are assisted by the Red Cross in different parts of Almería, Málaga and Granada.
Some politicians of PP They have criticized the “lack of coordination” and the “lack of information” in the process of transferring migrants to the Peninsula. A councilor from Torrox went further, comparing them to “animals” along with other comments that have raised a shower of complaints and criticism. However, among the residents of the area there have been no signs of rejection towards the group and everything is going normally.
