Wave of Africans floods Canary Islands

LOS CRISTIANOS, Canary Islands — Boatloads of destitute Africans on rickety fishing boats are turning up on the beaches of these Spanish resort islands nearly every day, gaunt and exhausted from days at sea.

They are the lucky ones.

Hundreds have died attempting the ocean journey, and authorities are worried about a looming crisis as summer approaches and more people make the trip.

"It's a worrisome situation," said Mayor Jose Alberto Gonzalez of the town of Arona on Tenerife island. "From a trickle it has turned into a flood."

Rescue services helped another 32 immigrants ashore Wednesday from an old 40-foot wooden boat, which had some water, coal and gasoline aboard, though not much food.

Austin Taylor, Red Cross coordinator, said some had arrived carrying cell phones, smiling and waving.

Gonzalez, like many other mayors here, is alarmed by a spike in the number of Africans trying to reach the archipelago — 4,000 so far this year, compared to 4,751 for all of 2005.

Jose Miguel Ruano, the Canary Islands' justice minister said the archipelago, which is part of Spain, is now Europe's most vulnerable frontier.

Ruano said Spain should beef up its border police, install more radar and have more joint patrol boats with Mauritania.

Ruano also called for more cooperation and investment in West African countries to bolster their economies in hopes of eventually stemming the tide of migrants.

But for now, he said, "we have to keep them from setting out." He said Mauritanian officials estimate 40 percent of those who leave for Spain from that country die in the attempt.

Regional authorities say nearly all of those who reach the Canary Islands are detained and repatriated.

Still, thousands of people from North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa try to enter Spain illegally every year, seeking either to eke out a living in this country or hoping to make their way farther north to other European countries.

For decades, immigrant boats have set out from Morocco, sailing north across the Strait of Gibraltar to the Spanish mainland or westward to the Canary Islands off the coast of northwest Africa.

But a crackdown by Moroccan authorities has turned Mauritania into the new magnet for Africans trying to reach Spain, a trip of four to five days in the open ocean. Authorities fear Africans might start coming in larger ships from Senegal or even more distant African countries if Mauritania steps up controls on its coasts.

Officials here have seen the Africans' desperation up close.

"You get personally involved," said Los Cristianos police chief Luis Carrion, who has overseen rescue operations and care of the Africans for three months. "It's a human drama, a catastrophe, seeing how these poor, desperate men have assumed a tremendous risk to seek a better life."

"They know how dangerous the sea is. They know about the deaths of other immigrants, and despite that, they still want to come. It shows how desperate they are," Carrion said.

The Africans are jailed at the police station for 72 hours for identification and questioning. Then they are held for up to 40 days before being released and expelled.

During detention, the Africans are mostly silent — never protesting or asking for anything, Carrion said.

The police chief said tens of thousands of Mauritanians are ready to set out for Europe.

"These immigrants are heroes. They transmit in their look the fear but also the happiness of having reached paradise," he said.