CASIMIRO CURBELO
We've been here for too many months. Too long. And I no longer have any doubt that in Europe the concept of solidarity and responsibility has been lost. With very few exceptions, the Autonomous Communities of Spain and Brussels have looked the other way, ignoring the problem that the Canary Islands are facing in absolute solitude. Taking care of almost six thousand migrant minors as they deserve, taking care of them and giving them the best services, is enormously difficult when the care capacity has been overwhelmed. It is very sad that so few have cared about the well-being of so many children. That so few have taken a step forward to become co-responsible. It can be understood in the case of a fiercely unsupportive extreme right, but it has no explanation in the case of those who say they believe in a more just and supportive society.
The Canary Islands have been denouncing the complicated situation that is occurring on the Atlantic route, strewn with deaths and despair, and asking again and again for measures, understanding and help from the European authorities. Throughout all this time we have received visitors and heard statements expressing full understanding of our problem. It would be unfair to say that nothing has been done. But it is very fair to say that in the face of a problem of enormous complexity we have reacted late, despite the fact that in the past we have warned time and again of the tension that was occurring in our reception capacity.
The Government of the Canary Islands has proposed legislative modifications to ensure that the care of migrant minors is a state responsibility and, therefore, shared by all. And this fact, that our Autonomous Community had to be the one to urge us to reformulate the legal framework that guarantees adequate treatment of migrant children, is the latest practical demonstration of the absolute disinterest aroused by the exceptional situation that is being experienced in the Canary Islands and which is also a State problem.
It seems deplorable to me that we are able to deal urgently and expeditiously with issues of a political nature, legislative projects that are debated on horseback out of the pure interest of the major political parties, and for months we have been dragging on an intolerable situation, unfair to the Canaries and even more unfair to the minors housed in overflowing facilities.
More than once we have complained on the islands about the lack of knowledge that exists about the Canary Islands. This chronic myopia always affects our special characteristics of remoteness and insularity, our repeatedly ignored Economic and Fiscal Regime Law or the adaptation that should be made to measures taken for continental Spain – for example the famous free rail transport – without taking into account the reality of our Archipelago. But in the case of migrant children, ignorance cannot be alleged either as an excuse or as a mitigating circumstance. There is no doubt that it is pure lack of solidarity, pure selfishness or pure disinterest.
The Canarian parliamentary groups, following the call made by the president of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, agree on the need to propose new legal frameworks from the islands to protect migrant minors and provide them with the best care and attention. I want to trust that this unity that has occurred in the archipelago among all political forces will receive the support of the Cortes Generales and the Government of Spain, whose minister, Ángel Víctor Torres, I know his sensitivity on this matter.
There is nothing more peremptory, there is no humanitarian task more important than putting first the interest and well-being of those thousands of migrant minors who have been accumulating in the care of the Canary Islands, far exceeding their capacity to care. It is a task in which we have been and are still inexplicably alone. And it is time for Brussels to look towards Spain and Madrid to look towards the Canary Islands.
