Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez travelled to the Canary Islands on Friday to meet with regional President Fernando Clavijo as the archipelago continues to face a high number of migrant arrivals and struggles to care for thousands of unaccompanied minors.
Sánchez’s minister for territorial policy and democratic memory Ángel Victor Torres, who is also the former regional president of the Canaries, spoke after the meeting on behalf of Sánchez’s government.
He said the discussions were fruitful and announced 50 million euros to the archipelago, extra financial help that had been given in previous years.
While adult migrants end up leaving the islands for mainland Spain and other parts of Europe following their arrival, unaccompanied minors are the responsibility of the regional government.
The Canary Islands says it currently is caring for more than 5,000 children and teenage migrants who reached the archipelago on their own, or who lost parents during the dangerous journey from the West African coast.
Torres said that Sánchez and Clavijo vowed to keep working on longer-term solutions to the issue of irregular migration but especially the topic of underage migrants travelling alone.
