arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

The Spanish Guardia Civil is trying to find, close to Fuerteventura Island, 15 African immigrants who disappeared tonight in this zone when they fell into the sea from the little boat where they were.

The Rescue Forces were transferring them to the Boat Rescue but some of them made sink their little boat and fell into the sea.
They disappeared when they were being saved.

The Police’s spokesman talks about 30 persons in the boat, 15 of them saved, but the other 15, all of them men and adults, are still lost.

Last night had intense activity for the Police and Rescue Forces in the zone, because in two hours, more than 100 persons from Africa tried to go to the peninsula but they were arrested by them before did it.

This tragic situation is very usual in the Spanish coasts.
Everyday, Police arrest some persons who try to arrive to Europe using this way: in “pateras” (a little and rudimentary boat, in which there are tens of people who pay somebody to have space on it to be transported like animals), crossing the Gibraltar Estrecho or from Africa to Canary Islands.

Actually, the Mafia around it is extended, and many people get a lot of money with “the transport” of these persons who only want a better life.
The problem is how detects it before they are in the sea, how detect them in their countries, where their Governments simply ignore this situation.

Every week, some of these persons die in their way to the “freedom”.
Every week, in the beach appear some bodies without life that anybody will ask for: they have not name, identity, country, nationality…nothing.
They are, simply, more immigrants died in the Spanish coasts.

The luckiest who arrive alive to the coast are, often, taken by the Security Forces (Police, Guardia Civil, Military Forces…) and given back to their country as soon as possible.

Before that, they stay at sports pavilions without sanitary conditions for hundreds of persons or without the basic human necessities satisfied because of the amount of persons is everyday bigger and bigger.

On 16th October 2003, 604 immigrants in 14 pateras were arrested by the Guardia Civil during that single day.
It was the day with more immigrants trying to arrive to Spain from years.
Until that day, 15.157 persons were arrested in their dramatic travel during 2003.

And the situation is everyday worse and worse: they can’t stay in their countries because they die and they can’t go out because they can die too or to be arrested and given back again.