No tourists, but many migrants: Canary Islands face a new reality

It’s the low season, but the Tenerife Ving hotel would still normally be packed with German and Scandinavian tourists escaping gray autumn skies.

Instead, the heads poking out from the hotel’s goldfinch yellow balconies are young men from Senegal and Gambia, who have recently arrived in this tourist town on the island of Tenerife after treacherous journeys on wooden fishing boats called cayucos. They’re in quarantine to protect the community from COVID-19.

“They won’t let us out,” a young Senegalese man calls out in French over his balcony. He’s been inside for more than a week and will stay for at least one more before being placed elsewhere or left to his own

“Everything is being improvised”Disquiet in the Canaries