Spain To Increase Services for Migrants, Arrivals Continue

On Friday, Spain's government announced that it would create 7.000 placements for shelters in the Canary Islands to face the massive arrivals of migrants in the last weeks.

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The Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security, and Migration will create facilities in seven locations between three islands. This as current shelters are overcrowded and authorities report that until last November 16, over 16.800 people had arrived.

"In parallel to the construction of these emergency places, work is being done on the deployment of more stable places in a similar amount in the sites that require adaptation work," Minister José Luis Escrivá explained.

Illegal migrations to the islands have increased more than 900 percent in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Spain's Ministry of Territorial Policy announced last week that it would increase security in the Atlantic route, the most common for migrants from North Africa.

The authorities also said that hundreds of tents would be installed. However, the authorities' intention is "to have the capacity to face possible increases in arrivals with greater security and flexibility than now."