Migration

200 migrants arrive in one day in the Balearics

Thirteen boats arrived on Friday

Over one thousand migrants have arrived on small boats in the Balearics this year.

Majorca Daily Bulletin reporterPalma30/10/2020 14:12

The government delegation in the Balearics reports there having been 13 migrant boats on Friday with a total of 201 people. With these arrivals, there have been 1,154 migrants this year, which is the first time that there have been over 1,000.

Of the 13 boats, seven were in Mallorca (or Cabrera). These had 92 migrants. The other six, with 109 people, were in Ibiza or Formentera.

The first boats on Friday were detected around two in the morning by the external surveillance radar system. There were three boats with forty occupants around eleven miles east of Cabrera. Boats from the Guardia Civil maritime service and the Maritime Safety and Rescue Agency were sent, picked up these migrants and took them to the port in Palma.

Around 3am, a merchant ship spotted a dinghy more than fifty miles south of Portocolom. Boats intercepted this dinghy and took eleven men to Portocolom; they were later transferred to Palma.

The Guardia Civil later detained sixteen migrants who had landed in the area of Platja d'en Bossa in Ibiza. The Guardia Civil found another boat at Marina de Botafoc (Ibiza) with eleven migrants, another in Platja d'en Bossa with eight, two in Figueretes with sixty people, and a further boat in Formentera with fourteen people.

To the south of Mallorca, as well as the four boats encountered in the early hours, another three boats with 41 migrants were found in Cabrera.