The Diplomat The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, resumes his official agenda today with a three-day tour of Africa that will take him to Mauritania, Gambia and Senegal in the midst of the migration crisis in Spain. Last Friday, Sánchez held a meeting on the island of La Palma with Fernando Clavijo, the president of the Canary Islands, the autonomous community that has suffered most directly from the avalanches of illegal immigrants in recent months, and who considers the 50 million euros that the Executive promised to care for unaccompanied minors to be insufficient. According to the latest data published by the Ministry of the Interior, as of August 15, the archipelago had received the arrival of 22,304 immigrants, 126.1% more than in the same period of the previous year, aboard 340 boats, 80.9% more than in 2023, when 188 arrived. Mauritania is one of the countries from which many of these boats come. The President of the Government returns, seven months later, to Nouakchott, where he had already been, together with the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, to discuss with the Mauritanian authorities how to strengthen cooperation with this African country and reduce migratory flows in small boats and canoes. On that trip last February, Sánchez announced that he would mobilize more than 300 million euros for Mauritania in the coming years. Specifically, he explained that, of the total amount, 200 million euros were to promote investment by Spanish companies in Mauritania; 60 million would go to development projects and another 50 million to financial cooperation for the African country. “We are going to strengthen our existing collaboration projects through border control and we are going to consider different formulas to facilitate regular migration,” said Sánchez in a joint appearance with Von der Leyen and the Mauritanian president, Mohamed Ould Ghazouani. The head of the Executive also announced during the official trip the opening of an extension of the Cervantes Institute in the capital, Nouakchott. The North African country is experiencing a period of political stability after a succession of coups between 1978 and 2008. Mohamed Uld Ghazuani, with whom Sánchez will meet again today, was re-elected for a second term last June, and in 2019 he was the protagonist of the first peaceful transfer of power since Mauritania's independence in 1960. In addition, the country has been experiencing strong economic growth, although this has slowed down in the last year. The main concern is that the instability experienced by the Sahel countries could end up spreading to this country in the form of a military coup like those experienced in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger - in addition to Guinea and Gabon - and that the jihadist groups that sow violence in the Sahel extend their activities to Mauritanian territory. During Sánchez's visit, Ghazuani assured that his country is "fully committed" to the fight against irregular migration but also made it clear that they are being overwhelmed by circumstances, as they have gone from being a transit country to also being a destination country for Malian refugees. Gambia and Senegal Gambia and Senegal, Sánchez's other two destinations, were visited in June by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, who indicated there that Spain would allocate 180 million euros to development cooperation over the next four years with a focus mainly on youth and employment. Among the issues discussed by his Senegalese counterpart, Yassine Fall, as well as with the country's president, Bassirou Diomaye Faye (it was the first contact of the Spanish Executive with the new Government after his election last March), the minister advocated exploring how to promote circular migration, that is, hiring at the source and subsequent return to Senegal. In this regard, they discussed the possibility of including the driver sector, given the demand for truck drivers that exists in Spain. The head of Spanish diplomacy also met in Banjul with the president of Gambia, Adama Barrow, and set the objective of promoting circular migration by hiring Gambians in their country of origin, in addition to continuing to work together in the fight against illegal immigration and mafias that traffic people. The second vice president, Yolanda Díaz, also traveled to Senegal and signed a memorandum of understanding to increase collaboration in the area of Labor Inspection with her Senegalese counterpart Yankoba Diémé. According to the Ministry in a statement, Díaz's department has reinforced work with other West African countries such as Cape Verde, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau or Togo and soon with Mauritania.
