A new case shakes the Canary Islands. The courts of the Spanish archipelago have opened an investigation into mistreatment and abuse in reception centers for minor migrants in the territory. Four cases were brought to investigators: two in Tenerife and two others in Gran Canaria, indicates the Spanish daily El País.
“We cannot give more information because they are under investigation,” the supreme prosecutor of the Canary Islands community, María Farnés Martínez, told the press on Monday, September 30.
“Continued physical attacks and ill-treatment”
El País nevertheless reveals some details on this file. Regarding Gran Canaria, justice is based on an alert given in 2021 by a group of social workers as well as a letter sent by the complainants to the Ministry of Social Rights. In a center in Las Palmas, minors say they were sexually abused by adult migrants housed in the same structure. Employees are also targeted for having silenced these practices, but also for “continuous physical attacks and mistreatment” against residents.
In the case of Tenerife, two centers are singled out, including a hotel transformed into a reception center. Young exiles interviewed by El País last July recounted the abuse they suffered while they were housed in a hotel in Puerto de la Cruz, in the north of the island. “They [des employés, ndlr] don’t need a reason to punish you. They take you to an office and two or three educators beat you,” explained a teenager from Gambia.
Some young people were reportedly locked in rooms transformed into solitary confinement cells to punish them for bad behavior. “The normal is three days, but some people were locked up for a week,” the Gambian reported.
The other complaint concerns one of the most populated centers in the Canaries, still in Tenerife, where up to 300 minors were housed at the same time. Former workers assured that they had witnessed several attacks committed by colleagues against young people.
Similar stories in other centers
This is not the first time that accusations of violence have targeted people employed in reception centers for minors in the Canary Islands. In November 2013, 12 young people sent a letter to the Spanish justice system in which they spoke of the mistreatment suffered in the Acorán structure, on the outskirts of Las Palmas.
The testimonies reported “violent blows” from the director of the center on a minor, immobilized by an educator. Another teenager claimed to have been the victim of “touching” in the office of the same manager.
Last April, it was the center of La Santa de Lanzarote that made the headlines. Five social workers are suspected of having forced young people to commit crimes (theft, destruction of furniture, etc.) in the structure, to sabotage its operation. If minors refused, they were deprived of permission to leave. The employees were also delaying their procedure for obtaining papers in Spain.
According to the daily El País, accusations of violence are common in accommodation places for exiles but these cases rarely come to light. Due to the language barrier or fear of the police and attackers, migrants do not dare to take legal action and prefer to remain silent.
After the revelations of the Spanish media, the supreme prosecutor of the Canary Islands community, María Farnés Martínez, recognized “dysfunctions” in the reception centers of the archipelago. But “they are not attributable to anyone, neither to the Canarian government nor to us,” she insisted. “They are symptomatic of the current situation.”
Tensions between the Canarian government and Madrid
Since the start of the year, the Spanish archipelago has been faced with a large influx of migrants onto its coasts. More than 30,000 people have landed in the Canaries since January, an increase of more than 120% compared to the same period last year. Among these exiles are many minors.
The president of the autonomous government of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, has not stopped in recent months calling on Madrid for help to take care of this population. More than 5,300 young people are housed in the archipelago’s structures, with a capacity of 2,000 places.
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