More than 80 people, including a baby, are feared to have died after a boat carrying migrants was found adrift in the Atlantic Ocean for 27 days, Spanish authorities have said.
Spanish Maritime Rescue teams located the vessel around 65 nautical miles southwest of Arguineguín, a coastal town on Gran Canaria, on Wednesday. They found 44 survivors on board, along with the bodies of five people who had died during the crossing.
The boat is understood to have departed The Gambia in West Africa in early August carrying 127 people. Helena Maleno Garzón, founder of the Spanish charity Caminando Fronteras, said 83 people had lost their lives during the voyage. Maritime Rescue said it had not been able to independently verify how many people were originally on board.
Rescuers said they had been forced to leave the five bodies found on the vessel because of dangerous sea conditions. In a statement, Maritime Rescue said: "Once the rescue was complete, adverse weather conditions in the area - featuring 20-knot winds and 2.5m waves - made it impossible to recover the five bodies found on board the vessel."
The 44 survivors are men from sub-Saharan Africa, according to the rescue service. Three of them were airlifted to hospital in critical condition, while the remaining survivors were transported by sea to Gran Canaria, where they disembarked in the early hours of Thursday morning.
Fernando Clavijo, head of the Canary Islands government, described the loss of life as unacceptable. Writing on X, he said: "It is intolerable that lives continue to be lost. The Canaries cannot get used to or accept as normal the fact that the Atlantic continues to be a death trap."
The Atlantic crossing from West Africa to the Canary Islands is regarded as one of the most dangerous migration routes in the world. Thousands of people attempt the journey each year in the hope of reaching Spanish territory, despite the risks posed by rough seas, strong currents and the sheer distance involved.
Migrants making the crossing typically travel in small, overcrowded wooden or fibreglass boats that are ill-equipped for extended voyages across open ocean. Journeys can take days or weeks depending on weather conditions, currents and the reliability of the vessel, leaving those on board vulnerable to dehydration, exposure and starvation if they drift off course or suffer engine failure.
Charities and rescue organisations working in the region have repeatedly warned that the true death toll along the route is likely to be far higher than official figures suggest, as many boats are lost at sea without ever being located. Caminando Fronteras, which tracks deaths and disappearances along migration routes to Spain, has previously documented a rising number of fatalities on the Atlantic crossing in recent years.
Spanish authorities continue to carry out search and rescue operations across the waters surrounding the Canary Islands, an archipelago that has become one of the main entry points into the European Union for migrants departing from West African countries.
