The Minister of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory, Ángel Víctor Torres, has this Monday backed the actions of the Government of Spain in migration matters, defending that it is addressed as a “cyclical phenomenon” and guaranteeing migrants “attention with dignity.”
In statements to the media before intervening in a Foro de Canarias7, he has insisted that migration is “cyclical” and has acknowledged that at this time there is “a surge, which is objective,” emphasizing that given this reality “there are two ways to respond.”
On the one hand, he has stressed the need to give “a humanitarian response, they are human beings,” and has criticized those who “are capable of saying that there are deaths to be lamented at sea,” while “at the same time they say that they are invaders, they point to them and they demonize them.”
In this context, he has referred to a message from the PP president, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, on his official X account, where he states that the Canary Islands “needs something more than a meeting,” a “serious” government that knows how “to close the border and open a debate with the Spanish people about who enters” the country, for what purpose and under what conditions.
Torres has said that this statement has “astonished” him, especially when the leader of the PP in the Canary Islands, Manuel Domínguez, “puts out a tweet saying that this is how this land is defended.” In response, the minister has emphasized that the central Executive defends immigration “for what it is, a cyclical phenomenon of people, of human beings who have to be cared for with dignity at the same time, which, logically, is an issue that all of Europe and all of Spain has to share when it comes to the response.”
Along these lines, he has recalled that it has been the current Government of Spain that has managed to “modify the Immigration Law so that unaccompanied minors are in the rest of Spanish territory,” a reform, he has stressed, that was approved with the vote “against by the PP and Vox, by the PP in the Canary Islands and by Vox in the Canary Islands.”
Interministerial Commission and support for El Hierro
For another part, Torres has referred to the Interministerial Migration Commission, of an extraordinary nature, which will meet this Tuesday. He has stated that the priority is “to work hand in hand with institutions, to help, to collaborate, as the Cabildo of the island of El Hierro is doing wonderfully.”
He has highlighted the work of "all the men and women who are working, the forces and security groups, the Red Cross, volunteers, people who are there risking their skin, alongside them the Government of the Canary Islands, with loyalty, and also their political groups from the opposition, who have approved a text and the Government of Spain that tomorrow will also say what we are doing, what needs to be done and what we can continue doing: financial aid, aid of human resources, aid to the island of El Hierro in the face of a phenomenon, I repeat, that is cyclical".
The minister has emphasized that this phenomenon has already been "overcome" in previous stages and that "now too" it will be achieved, offering a "dignified response to human beings".
Criticism of the proposals of PP and Vox
Torres also attacked, he noted, the discourse of "PP and Vox" when "it says that what has to be done is to put minors on the border, but then when they govern they know that that cannot be done".
In this regard, he has specified that close to 16,000 adult migrants in Ceuta have returned "from August 10 until today to Morocco, zero minors", since the guardianship of minors corresponds to the autonomous city, to the government of Ceuta, "presided over by the PP, and they have not been able to send back any, because it is not easy", because there is "a higher law of the minor" and "it is necessary to respond in individual case files. Family reunification has to be carried out also with the approval of the Kingdom of Morocco".
Along these lines, he reproached Vox leader Santiago Abascal for saying that "And to say, as Mr. Abascal has said, that what he does with minors is to put it on the border, is lying, is deceiving, that is to say something he knows cannot be done. He has not said it even Meloni in Italy".
In addition, he added that when PP and Vox claim that migrant people should not be moved to the rest of the national territory "they are clearly saying that all the migrants, who arrive in the thousands to the island of El Hierro on these days, stay in El Hierro, turn the Canary Islands into a permanent CATE", into an "immigrants' prison", criticizing that "that is the proposal they have for emigration".
Against that position, he has defended that the line of the Government of Spain is the one that was followed when in 2024 40,000 people arrived in the Canary archipelago, a moment in which "it gave a humanitarian, solidary response" with the resources available both in "the Canary Islands and in the rest of Spain".