The senator of the Canary Islands Coalition (CC), Pedro San Ginés, has called for a reinforcement of the security device at Lanzarote airport after the “obvious verification on the ground” that the current resources at the Lanzarote island aerodrome “are not sufficient to properly manage” the entry of passengers, especially in the months of greatest influx of travellers from foreign countries.
Along these lines, Pedro San Ginés has presented a series of questions to the Ministry of the Interior so that it “provides explanations and accepts that Lanzarote is a first-class destination and cannot continue with such precarious means at its airport.”
San Ginés asks why the guidelines of the European Council, which recommended in 2022 that the Government of Spain remedy the serious deficiencies detected in the State’s application of the Schengen acquis in the management of its external borders, have not been complied with, specifically the “urgent increase” of the personnel in charge of border inspections at Lanzarote airport, according to article 15 of the Schengen Borders Code, and that systematic border inspections be also carried out at exits according to article 8 of the Schengen acquis, in addition to adapting the infrastructure of Lanzarote airport to guarantee a physical separation between the transit of passengers on domestic flights and the flow of passengers on other flights in the departure area of the island aerodrome.
Pedro San Ginés calls for urgent attention to the large number of tourists arriving from the United Kingdom, a situation that after Brexit, which confirmed the British exit from the European Union (EU), has its own uniqueness. “As is known, there was already a shortage of staff before Brexit and since then the situation has only worsened,” says the senator of the Coalición Canaria, stressing that “Lanzarote is the island of all the Canary Islands that receives a higher percentage of tourists from the United Kingdom, so for obvious reasons it needs greater reinforcement in border control after Brexit.”
The formal complaint by the senator of the Canary Coalition comes after recent complaints from users, tourism companies and police unions about the “precarious and clearly insufficient situation” of passenger control due to the high level of airport activity in the summer months, but “what is worrying about this situation,” says Pedro San Ginés, “is that it is well known and admitted by those who have the responsibility to offer solutions,” as revealed by the responses of the Provincial Commissioner in the minutes of the quarterly provincial union meeting held last March 2024, according to which:
“In May 2022, the provincial commissioner had requested an extension of the job catalogue for the Arrecife de Lanzarote staff and its border post, a request that was reiterated in March 2023 with the request for a temporary attribution of functions while the increase in the catalogue was being substantiated, a claim that was reiterated in October 2023”, always according to the Commissioner himself, who added that given the lack of attention to these demands, he requested that all vacancies at the Lanzarote Police Station be filled by secondment and that the 22 Maspalomas positions be redistributed to allocate sixteen positions to Lanzarote and six to Puerto del Rosario, clarifying that it is the central bodies of the General Police Directorate that are responsible for adopting these measures”, concluded the Commissioner, with no solutions to this day.
For all these reasons, the senator of the Canary Coalition in his questions addressed to the head of the Ministry of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, stresses that the government is aware of this problem of human resources because it has been recognised and communicated on several occasions, without responses, and without us knowing why article 25 of Order INT/859/2023 is being breached, which develops both the organic structure and the functions of the central and territorial services of the General Directorate of the Police, by virtue of which when the town in which the border post is located does not have a local police station, as is the case, the officials would be integrated into the structure of the corresponding Superior Police Headquarters or, where appropriate, the Provincial Police Station, and not in the town of Arrecife, as is the case on the island of Lanzarote.
In short, the Canarian nationalist senator Pedro San Ginés asks the Minister of the Interior if he has already “drawn up and presented to the European Commission and Council, obviously not executed, the action plan for which he had a period of two months to implement the recommendations and correct the deficiencies detected in the EC evaluation of February 2022 for the application by the Government of Spain of the Schengen acquis in the management of external borders, and in any case demands its execution.
