Europe's new migrant hotspot races to cope with surging deaths

By Joan Faus

Two years ago forensic pathologist Modesto Martinez, 68, moved to the tiny Canary Island of El Hierro with an eye to retiring. Instead, he's been called out day and night to deal with dead African migrants, as they arrive by sea in increasing numbers.

"I thought El Hierro would be quieter, with two or three deaths a year," said Martinez, who came from nearby Tenerife, as he drove his Humvee car on a windy October Sunday to a funeral home to autopsy another body.

So far this year, 33 irregular migrants have arrived dead or died shortly after reaching El Hierro, according to official data. In 2023, the number was 11. In 2022, there was one.

The number of migrants arriving from the West African coast in the Spanish archipelago is running at all-time highs. But the rate of migrants going missing or dying on the voyage is growing five times faster, the latest available data shows.

Martinez is the only forensic pathologist on El Hierro, which has a population of 11,400 and is a rising destination for migrants at a time when overall irregular arrivals to Europe have declined.

As some European countries crack down hard on migration, the pathologist's predicament underscores the heightened risks being taken by those impelled to try to make a new life for themselves, as well as the dark months endured by their families seeking news of them.

The body that Martinez was about to examine was male, African, aged between 30 and 35. Like thousands of others, he had made a treacherous Atlantic crossing of roughly 2,000 km (1,242 miles) from West Africa, crammed into an open-topped boat.

He died the day before, apparently of hypothermia caused by many hours in cold, wet conditions without shelter.

So far this year around 20,000 irregular migrants have arrived on El Hierro, according to the Red Cross. That's about half the total of more than 40,000 who reached the Canary Islands archipelago over the period -- itself a new record.

Migrant arrivals to the Canaries rose 12% between January and October, according to Spain's interior ministry. But the number of dead or disappeared was up 61% in the same period to 891, according to estimates by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

It says the route is the second-deadliest in the world and since only partial data is available, its estimates are conservative. The Red Cross believes the majority of deceased migrants never even reach the Canaries, but either drown or their dead bodies are thrown overboard.

Spain has no official database of dead migrants: It only counts those arriving alive, said an interior ministry spokesperson.

"The causes of death are almost always the same: dehydration, hypothermia and drinking seawater," said Martinez.

Migrants barely eat or drink potable water in the roughly six-day crossing, Martinez said - when he opens a corpse he doesn't find any food remains, and any trace of water "smells like seawater."

"BATHIE BARRY"

In this case, El Hierro's authorities had a lead on the man's identity. Another migrant who arrived on the same boat had come forward, said he was a relative, and that the dead man came from Senegal and his name was Bathie Barry.

Confirming the identities of the dead can take months. Most migrants throw their ID cards overboard before reaching shore for fear of deportation, said a Spanish security source. The logic is that if they are unidentified, it will be harder for authorities to prove their country of origin and send them back.

Martinez noted in the autopsy report that the deceased had several teeth broken and missing.

The pathologist took a blood sample. This he would use to send DNA to a lab in Tenerife, which would upload the information into a database of missing people to compare against records of those already reported.

That process can take up to two months, Martinez said.

In his experience, he added, no match is found in over 90% of migrant deaths: It's too complicated to trace relatives or have them securely provide DNA samples from Africa.

Two of the three forensic police officers based in El Hierro took fingerprints and pictures of the body to upload into a law enforcement database.

VANISHED IN THE OCEAN

The surge in migration to the Canaries is one of several factors behind the rising deaths and disappearances, said Andrea Garcia Borja, acting coordinator of the IOM's Missing Migrants Project. It tallies estimates of deaths and disappearances via news articles, official sources and independent investigations.

Boats have been coming from further away in West Africa, with smugglers packing in up to 300 people on each craft, she said. Smuggling networks have exploited instability in the Sahel region, where an Islamist uprising is raging, and are dispatching more boats than in the past, according to the European Union border agency Frontex.

In September, only 27 migrants were found alive after a boat said by Spain's coast guard to carry 84 people capsized. It was the Canaries' worst shipwreck on record; a local judge is investigating the accident.

Nine people were buried in El Hierro. The remainder are believed to have sunk into the ocean.

Martinez said he received a call at 3am to deal with the dead.

At the time, El Hierro only had two cadaver refrigerators -- each with space for one body -- so Martinez placed the seven other corpses in a room normally used for wakes, which can be cooled close to zero degrees Celsius.

Martinez, whose grandfather embalmed the body of Spain's former dictator Francisco Franco in 1975, said he had never worked with migrants before he came to the island.

The absence of grieving families with their pressing questions, he said, makes it easier to maintain a clinical distance.

"The emotional attachment that accompanies death is missing," he said.

The island has one autopsy table, in a room without air-conditioning. Typical autumn midday temperatures reach around 20 degrees Celsius (68 Fahrenheit), so pathologists usually open a door onto the street, blocking the view with a hospital screen.

INTO THE VOID

El Hierro is just one example of the void into which migrants are launched when they board smugglers' boats.

"To the best of my knowledge, there is no specific protocol for the search and identification of missing migrants in Spain, any European country or the United States," said Borja, the IOM's Missing Migrants official.

The IOM said in a 2021 report that Spain lacked specific procedures related to the search, investigation and identification of missing or dead migrants. It called for the creation of a centralised mechanism.

An IOM Spain spokesperson said he was unaware whether Spain had applied those recommendations. Spain's justice ministry did not respond to questions on whether it had.

Following the September shipwreck, NGO Caminando Fronteras - which runs a hotline for migrant boats in distress – said the Spanish authorities have applied double standards in their response to migrant deaths compared with other maritime casualties.

"Spain does not apply the same laws and protocols to someone that suffers a tragedy on a yacht or a fishing vessel to those that die on a migrant boat," the NGO's founder Helena Maleno told Reuters.

A spokesperson for Spain's transport ministry, which oversees maritime policy, said the maritime authority does not investigate migrant boat accidents to determine potential administrative failures, because the boats are not certified and lack ownership information.

Overseas diplomatic offices can cooperate in handling death declarations following an air or maritime accident, but Spain's foreign affairs and justice ministries did not respond to requests for comment on when they had.

The Spanish interior ministry spokesperson said Spain's justice system and Civil Guard police investigate cases of migrant deaths in the sea if there is evidence of corpses missing, but declined to elaborate.

To try to fill the gap, in 2021 the Red Cross launched a programme to gather information about people who disappear or die while migrating to the Canaries.

In about 40% of cases, the Red Cross informally identifies dead migrants through evidence or interviews with friends or families, said Silvia Cruz, who works in the programme.

"SMALL TRIBUTE"

The day after the autopsy, the deceased migrant's body was interred across the island in a concrete grave in a wall of the El Pinar cemetery, at the foot of lava fields and surrounded by goats and shrubs.

It was marked with his case file number, his date of death and the words "Bathie Barry" and "Immigrant." Migrants occupy more than 30 mainly nameless slots out of almost 1,000 in the burial walls.

None of those who travelled with Barry could attend the ceremony. They were being held in police custody or in hospital.

The Red Cross contacted the shelter where his relative was staying to offer help passing word of his death through its global network, Cruz said.

It was a quick, silent interment attended by six people: Four officials and two volunteer mourners who bought flowers. One of them placed red, pink and purple blooms on the grave.

Some were inside a little paper model boat.

"Wherever their families are, we want them to know that we are here to accompany them and pay a small tribute," said the volunteer, Haridian Marichal, 38.

Last month, the regional government installed six new cadaver refrigerators in the port. The cemetery has requested an extension as it is running out of space.