Spain in migration emergency as one migrant dies every 45 minutes | World | News
Spain is at breaking point as thousands of migrants flock into the country to claim asylum, according to some of its leading politicians.
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is facing calls to declare a formal national emergency from the conservative opposition, as left-wing parties move to reform the country’s immigration laws to allow a more even distribution of its migrant arrivals.
At present, three areas of Spain are under severe pressure due to an influx of African asylum seekers: The Canary Islands, and the enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta.
Mr Sanchez’s governing Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), along with their coalition partners Sumar, as well as Coalicion Canaria presented a bill to Congress which would see migrant minors redistributed across Spain if a particular area exceeds its asylum seeker capacity by 150 percent.
According to Spanish newspaper Olive Press, there are 6,000 unaccompanied migrant minors on the Canary Islands, despite there only being a capacity for 2,000.
However, the conservative Partido Popular (PP) party is calling for a “migratory emergency” for the whole country, which it claims would enable the whole country to take advantage of emergency legislation to deal with the influx.
The same outlet reports that in the first five months since the start of 2024, there were 4,808 migrant deaths.
That equates to 33 deaths a day or one death every 45 minutes. The issue of migration is therefore unsurprisingly near the top of the legislative agenda in Spain.
Iñigo Errejon, Sumar’s spokesman in parliament, attacked the PP, saying: “Either you are with the policies of reception and human rights, or you are with the politics of hate and racism”.
Meanwhile, the hard-Right Vox party announced that it had broken coalition arrangements with the PP in five regions, after the PP backed a temporary measure to accept hundreds of unaccompanied children.
