SAN SEBASTIÁN DE LA GOMERA, Nov. 7 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The City Council of San Sebastián de La Gomera has decreed the temporary transfer of the facilities of the Vegaipala Shelter to the Department of Social Welfare, Equality, Youth, Children and Families of the Government of the Canary Islands to accommodate unaccompanied migrant minors.
Angélica Padilla, mayor of San Sebastián, points out in a note that the municipality cannot “turn its back on the humanitarian drama that the Canary Islands are experiencing” since this last weekend the number of migrants arriving during the ‘cayucos crisis’ has already been exceeded. ‘ in 2006.
“Especially dramatic is what the island of El Hierro is experiencing, where 9,000 migrants have arrived so far this year, a heartbreaking situation if we talk about the number of minors who have arrived in the Canary Islands, our Autonomous Community has guardianship of some 4,500 minors,” he details.
Padilla also assures that “the solidarity that is requested from the Canary Islands to the rest of the autonomous communities must also be evident within the archipelago, responding quickly and without duplicity to the needs derived from the humanitarian crisis that is being faced at this time.”
Thus, the Vegaipala shelter is made available to the General Directorate of Protection of Children and Families while direct management corresponds to the Coliseo Association, a collaborating entity of the Government of the Canary Islands, which offers comprehensive care to minor migrants. of age through an emergency device specially designed to assist them in a situation of extreme vulnerability.
“We cannot forget that we Canarians have suffered on our own skin very hard times of emigration, mainly to Cuba and Venezuela, and of the so-called illegal emigration such as the Telémaco motorsailer, which was one of the last clandestine vessels that left La Gomera in 1950 with 171 people on board,” he comments, in addition to the migratory flows of Canarians to other European countries more recently.
Initially, it is planned that the Vegaipala Shelter will accommodate some 35 migrant minors who have arrived in recent weeks to the archipelago and will have permanent care from the Department of Social Welfare, Equality, Youth, Children and Families of the Government of the Canary Islands.
