(Bloomberg) — Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is the most vocal supporter of migration among leaders in the European Union, but data released in Madrid on Thursday threatened to leave him facing pressure from supporters, both in the bloc and at home. Is. Strict border controls.
A total of 42,899 people – most of whom were fleeing increasing instability in sub-Saharan Africa – arrived in Spain by sea as of October 15 this year, according to the interior ministry, the highest number for a period on record, and even higher than in 2018. and annual total for all recorded years except 2023.
The data was released as EU leaders gathered in Brussels to discuss ways to tighten rules to curb arrivals into Europe.
France’s new Prime Minister Michel Barnier is pushing for early deportations. Prime Minister Donald Tusk has said that Poland will suspend the asylum rights of anyone entering the country through Belarus. And Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has already opened a detention center in Albania.
Sanchez is instead calling for the roughly 500,000 people already in Spain to be regularized and integrated into society, as well as advocating “circular migration” policies to create legal channels for economic migrants, he says. That Spain’s elderly population desperately needs it. Similar agreements have existed with Latin American countries for many years.
The Spanish leader and his Socialist-led government are facing pushback from the anti-immigrant, far-right Vox, the third-largest party in parliament. From the regional government of the Canary Islands, which says it does not have the capacity to handle the 32,878 people arriving on its shores in 2024 and the growing number of voters.
According to a survey by pollster 40dB published on October 7 by the left-leaning newspaper El País, about 57% of Spaniards say there are “too many immigrants” in the country. According to the survey, while 73% of Vox voters think immigration is a problem, about a third of Socialist voters think the same. About 18.5% of Spain’s population was born abroad.
Although people reach Spain via several points, the main route is currently the so-called Atlantic route. Given the open ocean distance from the departure point in West Africa to the Canary Islands, expedition groups consider it the most dangerous migration journey in the world. Most of those who reach the archipelago safely head to mainland Spain, but some then travel to other parts of Europe.
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