BRERA, Spain – News of Senegalese migrants arriving in the Canary Islands reminded Babou Diouf of the same perilous journey he made 17 years ago and the arduous journey to his new home in Brera, on Spain’s north coast.
Diouf, 46, a fisherman from Bassour in Senegal’s Sine-Saloum Delta region, was one of the many migrants arriving in 2006 from West Africa via Spain’s Canary Islands, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) off Africa’s northwest coast. Joined the.
According to academics, NGOs and migrants, more than 30,000 migrants arrived that year fleeing poverty exacerbated by a dramatic decline in coastal fish stocks, in part due to industrial fishing by European Union countries.
The 2006 record for migrants arriving through the Canary Islands was broken last year. According to human rights group Caminando Fronteras (Walking Borders), nearly 7,000 people died attempting to cross in 2023.
“It’s very difficult to see the rafts arriving in Spain,” Diouf said. “To cross an ocean without knowing what you are facing is to face death.”
Deprived of his livelihood in Senegal, Diouf ventured north. Now his fishing experience has secured him a new life in Spain, where the EU’s largest fishing fleet is shunned by ever more Spanish workers and recruiting foreigners to survive.
According to the mayor’s office, Brera fishing port has 9,450 residents of 44 nationalities, including 90 Senegalese and 244 Cape Verdeans.
About seven out of 10 crew members on Brera’s fishing fleet are foreign workers, said Juan Carlos Otero of Brera’s shipowners association.
Otero said Peruvians were the first to arrive in 2000 when locals left to work in the new steel mill. Indonesians’ longline fishing skills are so valued that boat owners pay for them to fly to Spain.
Some, like the Senegalese, find work through word of mouth or, if they have a residence permit, by showing up at the docks.
Immigrants are mainly welcomed by local residents and are transforming the town. Diouf regularly visits the recently built mosque. Cape Verdean women serve coffee and breakfast at Amares, a restaurant in the port.
in the sea
Diouf, who works alongside Indonesians, Senegalese and Spaniards on a salidar ship, stays active during his 14-hour shift, pulling in nets, cleaning hake and boxing.
Boat captain Francisco Gonzalez said Spain’s fishing industry could not survive without immigrants.
“There are very few young Spaniards, so the future lies in training immigrants,” he said.
In Senegal, Diouf tried to support his family by fishing in pirogues and dugout canoes. He also worked on French and Spanish ships and learned Spanish, but he struggled to make a living.
With declining fish stocks, making a living from fishing in Senegal and West Africa has become increasingly difficult, especially since the entry of industrial fishing companies, mainly from Europe and China, who have signed commercial fishing rights agreements with West African countries. There is.
The EU pays Senegal 1.7 million euros ($1.85 million) a year for the right to fish for around 10,000 tonnes of tuna. Two fishing boats are also permitted to fish for hake.
Ignacio Fresco Vanzini, senior policy adviser at marine conservation NGO Oceana, said it is estimated that about 57% of the resources in Senegal’s waters have collapsed.
Sergio López, manager of Brera’s fish producers’ organization, said two Brera fishing vessels are currently operating off the coast of Mauritania under the EU fisheries agreement.
Diouf blames the government for selling the best fishing grounds to international players.
“What do Senegalese get out of this? Nothing,” he said. “They’re taking resources away from Africans and now they’re saying it’s a headache for Africans to come to Europe.”
A spokesperson for the European Commission said EU vessels from Spain and France fish under agreements that follow international rules. “The EU’s fleet is simply fishing the excess of the allowed catch that coastal states consider unable to be harvested by their own fleets,” the spokesperson said.
road to brera
It took more than ten years for Diouf to reach northern ports.
He paid 500,000 West African francs ($830) for the pirogue’s locations from Mauritania to the Canary Islands. After a three-day journey, he spent a month on Gran Canaria before being flown by authorities to mainland Spain. Madrid police released him as an illegal immigrant, warned him not to steal or sell drugs, and said they wished him luck.
He headed south to Almeria to harvest vegetables. The work was inconsistent, poorly paid, and demanding. A zucchini farmer trained his dog to bark when he took a break.
Diouf tearfully said 2008 was the worst year of her life, as she only had three weeks at work. His fortunes changed in 2010 when another farmer helped him apply for legal residency. He then heard about the opportunity to work in the fishing industry, so he headed to Brera in 2018.
He now earns enough to rent a three-bedroom apartment and lives with his Spanish wife Sylvia, two-year-old daughter Sally, and 11-year-old stepdaughter Itzial, and his older children in Senegal. I also send money.
His brother, who arrived in mainland Spain on a raft from Morocco, and his two nephews, who had made the same journey through the Canary Islands, later joined Diouf in Brera.
But some experts warn that even with workers like Diouf, Spain’s fishing industry may not survive.
López said the industry could collapse in Brera, where about half of the fishing fleet engages in longline fishing, within three years of the EU including the fishery in its limits on bottom trawling.
Diouf is currently learning how to use a chainsaw and a stormer, as well as how to drive a truck when he’s not working at sea, in preparation for the day he can no longer fish.
Fatigue and lack of sleep do not faze him.
“It’s been like that all my life,” he said. “I sleep when I can, not when I want to.” Reuters