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CORRECTED: Record 8,157 migrants reach Canaries in November

A record 8,157 migrants landed in Spain’s Canary Islands in November, in what was believed to be the highest monthly figure on record, interior ministry figures showed Thursday.

The increase means almost 20,000 migrants now reached the archipelago since the start of the year after surviving a perilous boat trip from the African coast.

The number is nearly 10 times higher than in 2019, leaving the islands’ migrant reception facilities completely overwhelmed.

Interior ministry figures show that between January 1 and November 30, a total of 19,566 people landed on the Atlantic archipelago, compared with just 1,993 a year earlier.

Of that number, nearly 70 percent arrived in October and November.

The influx has echoes of the so-called “canoe crisis” of 2006 when 30,000 migrants reached the archipelago.

Although this year’s overall numbers are not as high as in 2006, an interior ministry spokesman said it was not possible to compare month-on-month arrivals as the data was not recorded that way at the time.

In a bid to tackle the crisis, Spain has begun building emergency encampments that can accommodate up to 7,000 people in an 84-million-euro ($98.5 million) project which would be paid for by European funds.

It is also housing migrants in hotels and tourist complexes that have remained largely empty as a result of the Covid-19 crisis.

Spain has also stepped up diplomatic efforts in various African nations to curb the arrivals at source and revive repatriation efforts that have been frozen by the pandemic.

Arrivals this year have soared after EU agreements with Turkey, Libya and Morocco cut off other popular routes to Europe.