Spain has more than 1,000 open cases of migrants missing at sea

October 17 a boat wrecked with more than a dozen people on board in the coasts of Almería. He had sailed on the eve of Oran (Algeria), when an engine failure left the drifting boat. There was only two survivors, rescued by helicopter by Maritime Rescue. Two days before the scene had been repeated on the coast of Cádiz. A merchant ship reported a partially sunken vessel 37 miles off Cape Trafalgar. The rescue patrol boats they recovered two men who were holding on to the hull and a third woman who was staying afloat on the sea. They also found four corpses and the testimonies of some survivors who reported another 21 missing.

Both stories come from the local press, where the slow-motion drama that takes place on the migratory maritime routes to the Spanish coasts is narrated every week. Hundreds of people drown or disappear every year in these crossings through the Mediterranean o la Atlantic route to the Canary Islands. For the castaways it is the end of a dream; for their families, the beginning of a long Calvary to recover his remains. “It is important to name these people and let their families know what happened. There is nothing worse than not knowing where your loved one is,” he says. Maria Angeles Colsa, director of International Center for the Identification of Missing Migrants (CIPIMD), based in Malaga. “At the very least, you have to tell them if he has died so that they can start the mourning. And then try to repatriate the body to bury it in the country of origin.”

Everything is more difficult than it seems because migrants rarely travel with identification. And the figures attest to this. More than a thousand people missing or deceased in recent years on the routes maritime they are waiting to be identified in Spain. The data does not come from the Interior or Justice ministries, which lack a centralized database on missing migrants, but on Spanish Red Cross and the CIPIMD, two of the few civil organizations that act as intermediaries between the families who are looking for their own and the authorities who are trying to formally identify the recovered bodies.

Deadliest year since 1997

Sometimes it is literally impossible. Particularly after the so-called “invisible shipwrecks “, in which there are no remains of the canoe or the deceased. But even when there are survivors, identification can become a hell of a puzzle. “The main problem is the lack of recovery of bodies “, says Marta Sánchez from the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Of the 1,255 deaths in Spanish waters during 2021, the highest figure recorded by IOM since 1997, solo 355 bodies have been recovered. “In those cases we only have the testimonies of the survivors, although they are not collected systematically,” adds Sánchez.

All the shipwrecks that leave a trace in Spain end being prosecuted with the intervention of the Civil Guard, in charge of reporting the accident and the victims. The forensic anatomical institutes compile the postmortem information of the corpses: DNA samples, dental record, fingerprints or, failing that, from the clothing to the physiognomic features or any personal effect that may contribute to the identification. But that is only part of the job because it is impossible to do the match without finding the relatives of the victims. And this is where the NGOs intervene before the absence of an agency in Spain that contacts relatives by default.

“Normally families call us when three or four days pass without news from their family,” says Colsa from his small volunteer organization, set up in 2017 and without public aid. “They prefer to come to us because they fear that their relative could be arrested if they inform the authorities and he is alive.” CIPIMD tracks your databases, nourished with the information of the shipwrecks they collect, and, if they find matches, they contact the authorities to obtain any identifying information about the disappeared person. They then send photos of the body or its personal effects to the family and, if they identify it, the police resort to Interpol to request at source the DNA or biometric file of the relatives with which to check the identification. If everything has gone well, the body is repatriated so that it can be buried at the source.

Neither accurate data nor search agencies

There is no reliable data on how many disappeared end up being identified. The only study carried out in this regard by the Free University of Amsterdam determined that of the 1,068 bodies found on the Spanish coasts between 1990 and 2013, only one 39% of the bodies recovered were formally identified.

“We have very good professionals, but we always media is missing. It cannot be that three months pass for the laboratory to send you the DNA results because all the work is centralized in Madrid “, affirms this woman raised in Switzerland in a family of Andalusian emigrants. But it is not the only problem that causes the identification index can be improved. “There are no specific procedures, protocols or institutions to take care of the search and identification of missing migrants “, denounced a few months ago the International Organization for Migration referring to Spain after defining its system as “confusing and convoluted “ for families looking for their own.

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The National Center for the Disappeared only takes care of the residents, unlike what happens in Italy, where the figure of a high commissioner for the identification of disappeared migrants has been created. And because there is not even a data bank to know how many open cases there are in Spain. “Does not exist a centralized registry of searches, deaths and disappearances“, acknowledge sources from the Ministry of the Interior, which only reports biweekly on irregular entries into the country.

“It is logistically complicated because there is a lack of resources, new protocols and greater political will,” says Sánchez from the IOM. “It also happens in other countries, although very little progress has been made in Spain in systematizing data and informing familiesIn the meantime, the tragedy does not cease. Almost as many people have died this year in Spanish waters as in the central Mediterranean, the most tragic of the world’s migration routes. The vast majority on the Canarian route, where the cayucos can spend weeks at sea. “The least we can do is restore dignity to these people who have suffered so many indignities along the way so that they can be buried,” says Colsa. “It’s a question of humanity.”