Irregular migration to Europe is down — except on Spain’s Canary Islands 

Sanna Silva, a 23-year-old migrant from Senegal, arrived in El Hierro, a fishing village in Spain’s Canary Islands, several years ago after a harrowing journey by sea.

He described waves as high as a house that tossed his flimsy boat around like a twig on the water. Then, there was the driving rain, and a hole in the boat. Silva, who had never been on a boat before, was ill, and he and the other passengers were all bailing water for three days.

“There was a moment when I said to myself, ‘This is the end. We’re going to die out here.’ We were completely lost,” he recalled.

But then, a rescue boat spotted them and brought them into port. Silva said that he had to be lifted to the pier.

In 2024, an average of nearly two migrant boats, or cayucos, reached the Canaries each day. 692 boats in all carried more than 46,000 people that year, mostly from Mauritania, Senegal and Morocco. 

On El Hierro, the migrants arrive at a tiny fishing port called La Restinga.

One week in December, boats brought in 700 migrants, according to Spain’s Maritime Rescue agency. A boat with 73 people on it was carrying six people who’d died along the way, either from dehydration, hypothermia or illness after days on the open water.

El Hierro residents, especially those down at the port, have been observing these events unfold almost daily for years now. 

A retiree named Rosi Quintero stopped on her way home to watch the latest rescue. She said that most locals feel empathy for the migrants. But there are some, she said, who work in tourism who say the boat arrivals are starting to hurt their businesses. 

“Visitors, they say, don’t want to see this. But I don’t see the logic in complaining,” Quintero said. “The migrants are human beings like us.”

El Hierro is by and large a welcoming place, she said. Especially for unaccompanied minors who, authorities say, are showing up in greater numbers on the boats.

“There are islanders who take care of these kids as if they were their own children,” she said. “The foster care system is working really well.”

Take Gilberto Caballo and Teseide Texeira, a couple who volunteer with migrants at one of the island’s two temporary shelters. They’re also fostering two brothers from Senegal, ages 12 and 10. 

On a recent afternoon at their home, the boys played video games and occasionally went outside to kick a soccer ball. 

“We were at sea for eight days,” the 12-year-old said.

The boys’ names can’t be used because they’re minors in the custody of the Spanish government.

“At night, the water was coming into the boat constantly, soaking us,” one boy said. “We slept in the bottom of the boat. It was cold.”

His little brother also chimed in: “For me, the trip was bad. I was throwing up the whole time And then, some white people came in an orange boat, and threw us life preservers.”

Caballo and Texeira have taken in 11 migrant children over the years. 

Texeira said that they’re motivated by the courage and suffering they’ve seen in the migrants who’ve made the crossing.

“There was one boy last year who had what we call ‘cayuco feet.’ It’s when your feet swell and split open after days of standing in the boat bottom at sea. The bottom is filled with urine and human waste. That can cause infections,” she said. 

The boy was taken to the hospital, but the open sores had spread up both legs to his knees. Shortly after, he died.

That boy was laid to rest on the island in a tiny, above-ground, white-washed cemetery. His name was Papa Moussi. But on his grave, it just reads “Migrant J-15,” a government database registry number, because when he died, they weren’t sure who he was. But now, his uncle is trying to get it changed to reflect the human being that he was.

Texeira is helping the uncle with the paperwork. She said that amid such tragedy, it’s also important to talk about the happy stories, too, like that of her foster kids. 

Or of Sanna Silva, who now has a job on El Hierro, working on a banana plantation. He’s also on the island’s soccer team, and dreams of going pro.

“I have an aunt in Paris, but I want to stay here. The people are so welcoming. I feel as if I were back in Senegal,” Silva said.  

But El Hierro is also a special case because most migrants are here for just three days — held out of sight at the center where Texeira and Caballo volunteer.

From this center, migrants are moved to one of the larger islands in the chain, and then usually, released after a few weeks. And on those other islands, residents have begun to protest.

One man on Gran Canary Island recently told Spanish TV that those residents also stand with the migrants, but are still overwhelmed.

“Someone needs to crack down on the human smugglers causing so much death at sea,” he said.  

Caminando Fronteras, a Spanish nongovernmental organization, estimates that a record 10,000 migrants drowned on the Atlantic route last year, though that number is nearly impossible to confirm.

What is clear, though, is that the tension is growing on mainland Spain too, where a law says that the country’s different regions must all receive migrants equally. But so far, regional leaders are resisting.

Caballo said the situation doesn’t make him very hopeful for the future. He said that he advises migrants to tell their friends and family back home to forget about Europe, because the people there are radicalizing against foreigners.

“It’s going to be harder and harder to make a life in Spain or on the continent,” he explained. “And if the journey to get here is hard now, controls at borders are only going to be tougher — which makes the experience more devastating for those who think they’ll find a better life here.” 

This report was produced in partnership with the Global Reporting Program at the University of British Columbia.