Pope visiting 'dock of shame' in Canary Islands where migrants slept in squalor

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BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Pope Leo XIV is visiting the Canary Islands on Thursday to draw attention to the plight of migrants who risk their lives every year trying to reach Europe, fulfilling a wish of Pope Francis to visit one of the epicenters of the European migration debate.

Leo is spending the final two days of his weeklong trip to Spain in the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago closer to Africa than the Iberian Peninsula that is a key point of entry for migrants smuggled from West Africa.

He is meeting with recently arrived migrants and representatives of the church and humanitarian organizations that care for them and work to integrate them into Spanish society.

Most poignantly, he will commemorate the thousands of lives lost at sea from a port that in 2020 became known as the “dock of shame” because of the squalid conditions migrants lived in when they came ashore during a spike in arrivals.

Spain’s Socialist-led government, which had been shamed by the 2020 crisis, has bucked a trend in Europe and the United States by defending immigration on economic and humanitarian grounds. It has launched a legalization push earlier this year for hundreds of thousands of immigrants without authorization.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has highlighted the benefits to the economy with an aging workforce and low birth rate.

Leo has already called for strengthened international efforts to prevent human smuggling of migrants, the creation of safe pathways for them to move legally and development in countries of origin so more people can choose to stay home.

In a speech to the Spanish Parliament earlier this week, the first-ever by a pope, Leo demanded welcome and integration for those who do choose to flee, insisting on their inherent human dignity.

“The moral greatness of a nation is manifested, above all, in its capacity to accompany, protect and love those lives that are most fragile,” Leo said in a speech that also upheld the inherent dignity of the unborn, the elderly and sick. He received a 7-minute standing ovation at the end.

Migrant arrivals in the Canary Islands peaked in 2024 at nearly 47,000, but have fallen dramatically, with just over 2,000 people landing there in the first four months of 2026.

Upon his arrival in Las Palmas, Leo was to head to Arguineguin, where in 2020 arrivals reached such numbers that migrants were forced to sleep in makeshift camps in the open air on a dock that became known as the “dock of shame.”

Many migrants were left to sleep for weeks with just a blanket and no showers. Potential asylum seekers had no proper access to legal advice and some people were held for weeks, much longer than the three days that the law allowed. The crisis shamed the government, which was forced by its ombudsman to shutter the makeshift camp and relocate the migrants.

Learning of the crisis, Francis had planned to visit the Canary Islands to bring his solidarity, but never managed the trip. Francis had made the plight of refugees a hallmark of his papacy, following the Gospel mandate to “welcome the stranger.”

Leo has followed suit, insisting especially on the dignity of migrants in his native United States amid the Trump administration’s crackdown and mass deportation program.

Next month, on July 4, the American pope will spend U.S. Independence Day on the island of Lampedusa, Sicily, another main point of entry for migrants smuggled from North Africa trying to reach Europe.

Francis had visited Lampedusa in 2013, on his first trip outside Rome, and tossed a wreath into the Mediterranean in honor of the thousands of migrants who died in the perilous crossing. It was on that trip that he coined a phrase that became a mantra during his pontificate denouncing the “globalization of indifference” that the world showed migrants.

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