(AP) A row over where to house African migrants increasingly arriving by boat on Spain’s Canary Islands deepened Thursday, when the mayor of the most affected town urged the Spanish government to transfer them out of local hotels.
More than 20,000 West Africans and Moroccans have reached the archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean by boat or been rescued at sea so far this year, up from 1,500 in the same period of 2019.
Onalia Bueno, mayor of Mogán in Gran Canaria island, said the government should remove 3,471 migrants, including unaccompanied minors, from 10 hotels in her area by the year’s end, when hoteliers’ contracts expire, and take them to government facilities, including in the mainland.
