Spain's Canary Islands record 1,488 arrivals in one day
Twelve boats landed on El Hierro alone, and the island council has declared a social emergency after more than 8,000 arrivals in five weeks.
Spain's Canary Islands received 1,488 people in a single day on Saturday, the highest daily total since November 2020, with most of them landing on El Hierro, the westernmost island of the archipelago.
Twelve wooden fishing boats, known as cayucos, reached El Hierro carrying 1,235 people, Euronews reported, citing provisional figures. Another 203 people were intercepted on a boat off Gran Canaria and 50 arrived on a vessel in Tenerife. Anadolu Agency put the fleet at 14 boats carrying 1,488 people, all rescued by Spain's coastguard.
The previous single-day record was 7 November 2020, when 1,461 people arrived in 33 boats, according to Euronews. Saturday's count excludes two rescue operations still under way and 122 people who reached La Restinga at 23:55 on Friday. Across Friday and Saturday, 2,331 people arrived on 22 boats.
Provisional data counted 108 women and 167 minors among Saturday's arrivals. Spain's Maritime Rescue service deployed six vessels, the Diphda, Acrux, Navia, Alpheratz, Mizar and Urania, alongside two Civil Guard patrol boats, Río Tajo and Río Guadiato.
El Hierro's Temporary Foreigners' Reception Centre was holding 317 people before the latest landings, and 158 people were transferred to Tenerife on the regular ferry service. Eleven people from earlier arrivals remained in hospital on the island.
Fernando Clavijo, president of the Canary Islands, said the steady arrival of boats this month had overwhelmed the island's resources. El Hierro's island council declared a social emergency after more than 8,000 people reached the island over five weeks. Clavijo wrote to Magnus Brunner, the European Commissioner for Migration, asking for urgent action on the Atlantic route, and said Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez had promised to convene an Interministerial Commission on Immigration. Ángel Víctor Torres, the minister for territorial policy, is due to visit the port of La Restinga on Sunday.
Spain's Interior Ministry recorded 6,194 arrivals in October, the heaviest migratory pressure on the route since 2023. Forecasts do not point to a decline before December, when weather conditions change on the crossing of more than 1,000km that links the islands to Senegal, Gambia and Mauritania. Canary Islands authorities attribute the surge to a loss of control by Senegalese security forces, which have been deployed for sporting events in Dakar.
Txema Santana, a former migration adviser to the regional government, said residents of El Hierro were protesting not against migrants but against a slow or absent official response. He called for services to be reinforced before the high season and for arrivals to be moved off the island as quickly as possible.
How the reports differ
Euronews carried the only detailed breakdown: 108 women and 167 minors among Saturday's arrivals, the names of the eight rescue vessels, the occupancy of El Hierro's reception centre, and the regional government's explanation that Senegalese security forces have been diverted to sporting events in Dakar. Reuters, NDTV and U.S. News & World Report rounded the figure to "nearly 1,500" or "1,500" without the island-by-island split, while Euronews and Anadolu gave the exact number as 1,488. Anadolu said the coastguard rescued all 1,488 people aboard 14 boats; Euronews counted 12 boats reaching El Hierro plus one each to Gran Canaria and Tenerife. NDTV and U.S. News published no detail beyond the headline figure, and Euronews alone quoted the former regional adviser Txema Santana and the Senegalese documentary subject Thimbo Samb on why people are leaving.
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