Barcelone ou la Mort

Since January 2006, more than 25,000 illegal immigrants have reached the Canary Islands from the coasts of Senegal and Mauritania. 3,000 have perished. A good number of these young people come from Thiaroye, a fishing community in the suburbs of Dakar, where the departures are directly organized. In the best of cases, they spend eight days and nights crammed with a hundred others aboard a 40-foot dugout, defying the storms. In the worst, the journey ends in death. In Thiaroye, everyone knows the risks. But the candidates are more and more numerous and the young people only talk of Las Palmas de Canaria, first stop on the road to Madrid and Barcelona.