Spanish aid organisation Caminando Fronteras (Walking Borders) said more than 6,600 migrants died attempting to make their way to Spain by boat in 2023, almost three times the previous year’s figure of 2,390.
In its Right to Life monitoring report, the NGO noted: “In 2023, 18 people died every day on the different migratory routes to the Spanish State.
“2023 has been the deadliest year since records began in 2007. Up to 6,618 people lost their lives at the Euro-African Western Border, including 363 women and 384 children.”
Most perilous, according to Walking Borders, is the Canary Islands route across the Atlantic Ocean, just West of Morocco. It is often used by migrants coming from Mauritania, Senegal and Gambia.
🚨 El año 2023 ha sido el más mortífero en las fronteras españolas: 6.618 personas ha muerto en su intento de cruzarlas. #DerechoAlaVida2023 #VictimasFronteras2023 pic.twitter.com/XJkVO6LDRe
— Caminando Fronteras (@walkingborders) January 9, 2024
The NGO named what it believes are the main causes of the rise in fatalities: “The prioritisation of border control over the duty to provide assistance, the failure to activate search and rescue resources with the necessary urgency, the increasingly common practice of passive searches, the impact of the externalisation of borders with third countries or the reduction of resources intended for the protection of life.”
Walking Borders also accused political parties of “using racist, dehumanising narratives”, in particular describing political representatives from the Partido Popular (PP) and VOX parties as “xenophobic”.
Spain’s interior ministry recorded an unprecedented 57,000 migrants coming by boat in 2023, almost double the previous year’s total.
On January 4, Spain’s interior minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said that some 40 per cent of irregular departures were prevented last year through “co-operation” with African countries.
This resulted in around 27,000 migrants being prevented from arriving in Spain in 2023, according to the minister, which “means having saved lives”, he said, by preventing migrants from undertaking “dangerous sea crossings in difficult conditions”.
Still, migrants continue to land in the Canary Islands, which experienced a record-breaking number of entries over the latter months of 2023.
Just between January 4 and 5, at least 381 people were retrieved at sea and brought to the island group, according to local emergency services’ reports released on January 5.
Of those, 273 disembarked at El Hierro, the smallest of the Canary Islands, while the remainder landed at Gran Canaria. Six people were hospitalised.
