Reaching the Canary Islands: The unaccompanied children on one of Europe’s most dangerous migration routes 

Spain’s Canary Islands have become one of Europe’s main arrival points for unaccompanied migrant children. One in five people dies on the Canarian migration route with ocean crossings that take several days. Teenagers Mariama and Mohamed describe their own journeys and their hopes for the future. 

A slender girl in a soft pink sweater approaches the table where I am seated. Mariama walks calmly, almost shyly. We are meeting for the first time on a sunny day in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. 

The tall trees of Parque San Telmo cast shifting patterns across the pavement. Around us, commuters rush toward buses, and children run around the square.   

It has been nearly three years since she arrived alone in Spain’s Canary Islands, a remote Atlantic archipelago that has become one of Europe’s main arrival points for unaccompanied migrant children. 

Mariama had left her home country, The Gambia, aged 16, crossed into Senegal, and boarded a wooden fishing boat carrying 182 people. It was her first time at sea.  

“People on the boat kept noticing me, that little girl there. But I was not scared,” she says.  

Nearly three years later, Mariama is 18. She has excelled in her studies, become fluent in Spanish, and is now studying to become a nurse. Whenever she can, she sends money home. “I do miss my country and my family, but I also have a future to plan. I want to narrate my own story.”  

Beneath her journey lie memories of a childhood she needed to escape but has not yet found the words to speak about. “I was a child who had no voice,” she says, her eyes drifting for a moment. “No voice to defend myself.” 

Her story is one among thousands of unaccompanied minors who survived one of the world’s deadliest migration routes from the West African coast to Spain’s Canary Islands.  

The islands have received more than 165,000 migrants (many likely to be refugees or asylum seekers) between 2020 and 2025, with thousands of unaccompanied minors entering an already overstretched protection system.

One in five people die on The Canarian migration route

Mariama describes the event that suddenly pushed her to leave home as something that may have involved violence, trauma or both. “It was very hard for me to move on.” She says. “I never thought of migrating until it happened”. 

Her father, who she describes as her ‘hero’ paid a smuggler approximately 60,000 Gambian dalasi — roughly £615 to take her to the Canary Islands. 

She travelled from the Gambian capital of Banjul, where she lived, to Senegal by a series of buses, taxis, motorcycles, and river crossings before reaching the departure point. 

Many passengers were older men. Some women were pregnant. Others travelled with children. “I was the only single girl, but I felt protected by other passengers,” she says. 

The ocean crossing lasted five days. Mariama only learned of the dangers after she arrived, and says she would never encourage her younger siblings to make the same journey: “You are either going to make it here, or you will die.” 

Every day, bodies disappear into the Atlantic — children, teenagers, men and women, swallowed by one of the world’s deadliest migration routes. Estimates suggest one in five people die making the crossing.  

At the height of the crisis in 2024, nearly 10,000 people perished. Many die from shipwrecks but also from hypothermia, dehydration, or disease. By the time help arrives, their bodies have often already been thrown overboard by fellow travellers. 

The route has been in use since the nineties, but EU deals that reduced Mediterranean crossings pushed migrants onto the far more dangerous Atlantic alternative, resulting in an enormous spike in 2024.  

Arrivals fell dramatically in the first quarter of 2026, due to a combination of factors including weather conditions, Europe’s containment strategy, and the opening of new routes, such as from Algeria to the Spanish Balearic Islands.  

Yet for those who still attempt the crossing, the dangers have grown. As pressure mounted on Morocco and Mauritania through EU funding and border deals, departures shifted south, from Senegal and The Gambia. Recently, departures have moved even further south to Guinea-Bissau and Guinea. These are now journeys of 1,000 to over 2,000 kilometres, lasting more than ten days.  

“We are talking about ten days of hunger, ten days without water,” says Sara Casero, UNICEF Spain advocacy officer. “Many children who arrive have witnessed people dying around them, among them, in some cases, their own parents, siblings, or friends.” 

Many crossings are also preceded by a long journey. “Some children have been travelling for years before they reach Europe,” Casero explains. “Many may have experienced gender-based violence, sexual violence, forced marriage, or other forms of exploitation.”

I thought when I came here I wouldn’t suffer anymore

“When I left, I thought of my parents who suffered. I thought: I’ll take the chance, if I arrive, fine. If I don’t arrive, it doesn’t matter. Actually I thought I wasn’t going to make it,” says Mohamed* speaking over the phone. He asked to use a different name to protect his anonymity.  

In February 2025 I met Mohamed, then 17 years old, near the centre for minors in Las Palmas where he was staying. We spoke briefly about his life in Las Palmas and his journey. Nearly a year and a half later, we caught up and since then his hopes of a better future have dimmed: “Sometimes I think about going back to Africa, but I can’t, because I haven’t achieved what I want yet.” 

Mohamed was a child when he first went out to work at sea. He grew up in a small fishing village in Senegal, and despite being used to a life on the water, nothing had prepared him for what he would witness during his journey across the Atlantic Ocean.  

In 2023 at only 16 years old he paid 700,000 Central African CFA francs, the equivalent of £920, to board a fishing boat leaving from the Senegalese coast. He was accompanied by a friend of his parents. The crossing to El Hierro (the southernmost tip of the Canary Islands) took four days.  

Before they left, he describes how the Senegalese police had tried to stop them, stripping passengers of their lifejackets: “There were several people who died because there wasn’t enough food and water. We couldn’t carry on with a person who is not alive, so their bodies were thrown overboard.”  

When they finally reached El Hierro, the face of the family friend he was travelling with was covered in sores from the journey. 

Mohamed says many Senegalese have been forced to attempt this dangerous journey because of European and Chinese industrial fleets moving in, taking the fish that coastal families like his had always depended on. He describes how foreign fishing vessels would sometimes ram local vessels and sail on without stopping.  

“Many people die from that,” he says. “If they ram your boat and the fish you caught falls into the sea, they will not help you.” 

By the time he was twelve, Mohamed had already left home alone, travelling to Mauritania and Gambia in search of better pay. He could not find a living wage in either country.  

“If they see that you are young, underage, they are not going to give you all the money, they will give you only a small part,” he explains.

A system under pressure

When Mohamed finally reached the Canary Islands, he was placed in a reception centre housing almost a hundred unaccompanied minors. 

In February 2025 I spoke to other boys at the same centre who spoke of violence and being locked up as punishment. I later found out they had given me false names. Even with anonymity assured, they were too afraid to reveal their real names. It was only when a damning investigation by El País came out a few months later that the reason for their fear fell into place.  

The centre was run by Quorum Social 77, responsible for housing a third of all unaccompanied migrant minors across the Canary Islands. Since 2025, shocking revelations have exposed a deep pattern of abuse, including physical and emotional mistreatment, workers hauled before the courts, and several of its dozens of centres were forced to close.  

The wider crisis had been years in the making. In 2024, nearly 6,000 minors fell under the Canary Islands’ care while reception capacity stood at just over 700 places. In 2025 Spain introduced new legislation to allow about half of these children to be taken to various parts of mainland Spain, bringing numbers down to around 3,000, but concerns about conditions in the Canary Island centres persist. 

In May 2026, authorities started procedures which could potentially close another Quorum-managed centre after uncovering serious breaches including the administration of unprescribed drugs, poor hygiene, and a lack of educational support.  

“There were some bad workers in the centre,” Mohamed says, remembering his time there. “Some workers told us we didn’t belong there, that people in the city didn’t want us”. 

Life in Europe has not been what he imagined. “I thought that when I came here I wouldn’t suffer anymore,” he says. “But I suffer a lot. Sometimes when I take the bus, people speak over my head as though I can’t understand, saying that people like me came only to take.”  

Then, carefully, he adds: “Not everyone. There are very good people too. There are good people, there are bad people. Every country has both.” 

In Senegal, Mohamed had studied the Quran, but couldn’t access formal education. At the centre he completed a short catering course, learning the basics of waiting tables and cooking. Now nineteen, he lives in San José, a neighbourhood on the outskirts of Las Palmas, sharing a flat with another young West African in a similar situation and splitting the €450 rent.  

He works as a waiter in the touristic south of the island, but only when he is called. Irregular shifts on a one-week contract offer no security. He is trying to save, trying to learn. He has taught himself to read and write using YouTube videos on his phone, watching tutorials in Wolof and Spanish. “Writing and reading,” he says. “I study only on my mobile.” 

Mohamed’s voice lights up when he talks about what he actually wants to do: be a gardener. Flowers, plants, pruning, the work of caring for growing things. He has heard there is a two-month course that could qualify him for that kind of work. He wants to take it, but cannot afford two months without income.  

“My dream?” he continues. “I wish to have a family and be able to take care of them. I wish to help my parents so they have everything they need.” 

Sometimes he thinks about going back – to Africa, to home, to the village that has grown more full with foreign fishing companies since he left. “I can’t,” he says, “there is nothing there and I haven’t achieved what I want yet.”

Firstborn child

During my second meeting with Mariama, she welcomed me into her apartment in La Feria, a neighbourhood on the outskirts of Las Palmas. Tall buildings loom sombre against an overcast sky.  

The islands present a striking mixture of beauty and hardship, the endless blue of the sea, framed by green forests and rugged volcanic landscapes, authentic port villages standing in sharp contrast to the grey concrete of neighbourhoods like this one.  

The archipelago, home to just over two million people, draws sixteen million tourists a year, yet remains one of the poorest regions in Spain, with a third of its population at risk of poverty and social exclusion. 

The apartment was dated but kept spotless, by Mariama and her three roommates. “Sometimes I feel lonely here,” she told me. “In the centre, the workers became like family.” It had been her home for more than a year and a half, until her eighteenth birthday. Then came six months of moving between centres, before she settled here. 

Not long before we met, Mariama had lost her closest friend. “The moment we met, we became friends. I couldn’t resist. She was my protector.”  

Her Congolese friend Divin had suffered from sickle cell disease and had known the severity of her condition. Mariama had not. The day before Divin died, they spent the whole day outside together.  

“I didn’t know those would be our last moments. When it happened, I didn’t talk to anyone for a week.” Social workers helped her into therapy. Since then, she also takes medication, “for trauma,” she explains. 

Through grief, Mariama found an escape in education. Within half a year of arriving in Spain, she sat an academic placement exam in a language she had only just begun to master. When the results came back, staff gathered around her in celebration.  

“I saw my mark and it said 7-something [out of 10]… I didn’t know whether to cry or laugh.” Still, despite her success, Mariama struggles to feel deserving, to feel she belongs. “In my class, I’m the only Black person. They are very kind. But I feel like I don’t belong, because of my colour, or my origin.” These feelings are not easy to shake. 

This year, Mariama learned that her family back home was struggling more than she had known. Her father had tried to shield her from it. “He didn’t want me to worry. But I still found out.”  

Doctors had ordered him to stop working as a carpenter. “Sometimes he would feel dizzy and fall from the top of a building.” But stopping was never really an option. “As an African, you have to work to survive. So he has no choice.”  

With no government support to fall back on, help comes from wherever it can. “It’s neighbours and family members, and now me,” the 18-year-old says. 

As a child, Mariama dreamed of acting, writing, and speaking publicly. She was invited a few times onto a local radio station. She was even offered a role in a film. She has already written a book — one she hopes to publish this year.  

“It’s not just a personal story. I believe 99.9% of people on earth are going through something. They feel alone, they feel scared,” she explains. “This book is for them, to let them know they have a voice, that they are not powerless.” She pauses.  

“Maybe it can help others. That is my aim: to use my talents and education to help others, my family, people from The Gambia, but also people here, because this is now also my country.” 

Read more:

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• While We Wait: The stories of seven refugees waiting to restart their lives

Featured image by Rob Bertholf on Flickr.