Migration to Canary Islands puts immense pressure on Spain’s poorest region

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The ocean separating the Canary Islands from the African mainland is usually easy to see from the training complex of football club CD Tenerife. But today, a blanket of fine Sahara sand obscures the view.

Youth coach Younousse Diop (31) grew up in the village of Gandiol in Senegal and has just given football training to a group of boys from Mali, Burkina Faso, Cameroon and Senegal. All left for Europe from the Senegalese coast and all floated around at sea for days until they were picked up by the Spanish coastguard.

From the lawn high up in the mountains, Younesse peers towards the ocean. Since 2021, he has been involved in a joint project between the local authorities, the Universidad de La Laguna of San Cristóbal and football club CD Tenerife to help young migrants integrate through sport.

Younesse knows what they went through. When he was 12, his own father put him on a boat bound for Spain to earn money. ‘In total, I spent 11 days on the open sea’, he says. ‘I fell asleep wet and woke up soaked. There were sharks and metres-high waves you couldn’t escape. Most of the boys here have also experienced that and are traumatised. The sea is hell.’

Five thousand underage migrants

The Canary Islands are the poorest region within the Spanish kingdom and just under a million people live in Tenerife. The never-ending flow of migrants therefore puts considerable pressure on the island.

A network of reception facilities provides temporary housing. But that costs the regional government about €156 million a year. The largest of these shelters is the Las Raíces tent camp, opened in 2020 with European funding, right next to Tenerife’s northern airport, where holidaymakers arrive in droves. Las Raíces is located on a former military site near the forest. More than two thousand underage asylum seekers live densely packed there.

‘Many have been victims of human trafficking, become addicted to drugs or suffer from mental health issues.’

In the car park near the camp, groups of boys hang around. Some of them have formed a running group and are running along the provincial road in bright orange vests. Three Moroccan boys have set up a barber shop between the cars and charge two euros per haircut. Further along, a Spanish family hands out bags of old clothes.

Sandra Rodríguez is Director-General for Youth for the regional government and, in that capacity, also responsible for conditions inside the camp. ‘There are currently around five thousand underage migrants trapped in Tenerife’, she says. ‘Many have been victims of human trafficking, became addicted or have mental health problems. When I started my work last year, almost no attention was paid to them.’

Frontex

The Spanish government representation office in the Canarian capital Santa Cruz is housed in a large building with heavy wooden interiors. On the wall hang carpets with the coat of arms of the Spanish crown and a large mural shows a colonial scene of conquerors from Spain coming to civilise the half-naked locals.

Representative Anselmo Pestana Padrón is a member of the Social Democratic Party (PSOE) and knows the problems on the islands. Yet within the EU, the Spanish government is pushing for a wider deployment of the European border agency Frontex to stem the flow of migration from Africa.

At a working lunch of European interior ministers in October 2024, Spain proposed that Frontex seek permission from governments in West Africa to stop migrant boats in their territorial waters.

‘We now have two helicopters that can share the location of refugee boats with African coastguards’, Padrón explained. ‘If Frontex itself can operate in the sea off Senegal then we will expand our capacity considerably. But on top of that, it is especially important to get circular migration right so that people can legally earn money within the EU and then return home safely. Now hundreds die at sea every year.’

He explains how that should work: ‘Migrants from Senegal are mostly economic migrants who may be deported again. Besides fishermen and farmers, they include people with university degrees. We need to better monitor exactly who comes ashore so that we can provide appropriate solutions. In many Spanish regions, for example, workers are needed in the hospitality or agriculture sectors. The guys who could get work there are now often stuck in the Canary Islands while unemployment is very high here.’

You can’t control migration

According to Frontex, throughout 2024, the number of ‘irregular border crossings’ at Europe’s external border decreased by 38%. On the route from West Africa, that number actually increased by 18% to a record almost 47,000 arrivals, the highest number since Frontex started monitoring in 2009.

Migration is timeless and cannot be controlled. Certainly not as long as people in my home country struggle to make a living.

Much is expected in Brussels from the EU Migration Pact, which came into force in June 2024 and will be implemented in practice within two years. That new treaty should allow for better screening of exactly who is applying for asylum, faster return procedures have been agreed, and a solidarity scheme will be established that allows northern EU member states to financially support arrival countries in southern Europe or take over migrants. It will also make it easier for Frontex to work with African countries to stop migrant boats.

Yet Younesse Diop believes that all these initiatives will not stop migration until economic and living conditions in Africa improve. Merrily throwing balls over, he walks to the dressing room in the stadium. On social media, he shares football photos and on Instagram he shows pictures of his life in Spain.

He still speaks to his father in Gandiol regularly, Younesse says as he writes down his family’s contact details in Gandiol. But going back to Senegal is a bygone stage for the 30-something.

Younesse does a dance in the catacombs of the stadium and looks at the sea. ‘Tenerife is paradise for me. That’s because in this life, we Africans have to fight for our existence. This is my way and I try to help other migrant boys have their way. Migration is of all times and you cannot control it. Especially not while people in my homeland are struggling so hard to make a living.’

(Originally published in Dutch on may 5, 2025)