"It Ruins the Vacation Feeling"
Tourists and Refugees Cross Paths on Gran Canaria
Gran Canaria's tourism industry is doing all it can to
survive the coronavirus. Some luxury hotels are even hosting the increasing
numbers of migrants arriving from across the ocean. It is a clash of two
worlds.
By Dialika
Neufeld und Philipp Spalek (Photos)
07.01.2021,
21.41 Uhr
Booking.com
review from Teodora posted on Nov. 5: The entertainment program was fantastic …
The iron could be used free of charge … Bar staff were also great and had a
variety of cocktails on offer. The water in the children's pool was colder than
in the main pool … The meat was a bit too well done (lamb and pork) and chewy.
One week
after Teodora posted her hotel review on Booking.com, several tour buses full
of new guests pull up in front of the Servatur Waikiki hotel in Playa del
Inglés on the evening of Nov. 12. The new arrivals, wearing gray, red or black
sweatsuits from the Red Cross, disembark and form a line. Unlike the German,
British and Dutch tourists checking into the Hotel Riu Papayas next door, where
the palm trees are wrapped in lights, the new arrivals have no luggage with
them. The new Waikiki guests are carrying their belongings in transparent
plastic bags, mostly just some papers and a mobile phone. They had to throw
their backpacks into a dumpster down at the port. "Everything is
contaminated," they were told.
"It's
all very family-friendly here. Children can shake a tail feather at the nightly
mini-disco, while parents can relax in the chill-out zone with an adults-only
tag. The pool's got a shallow bit for the little ones, too," reads the
hotel description on the TUI website.
The new
guests, though, have no idea what is awaiting them. Most have never stayed in a
hotel before. They are from Morocco, Mali, Guinea and Senegal and traveled to
the Canary Islands on board open fishing boats across the Atlantic. They have
spent the past several nights sleeping on damp ground down at the port of
Arguineguín, in an overcrowded tent camp across from the banana boat rental.
Now, though, they are checking into the Waikiki, where the Tiki Bar has
recently been cordoned off. It is a strange limbo they find themselves walking
into on this November day.
Question from Katharina on Holidaycheck.de: Hi. Is the
hotel open at the moment? Thank you. Response from Bine: Yes, filled with
around 1,000 refugees."
Waikiki is
a themed hotel with 513 rooms. Everything here screams "Hawaii,"
almost as though Gran Canaria wasn't exotic enough for its European guests.
"Live aloha," reads a sign above the beds in some of the rooms, while
food is served in the Kalua Restaurant. A huge great white shark protrudes from
the kiddie pool, which is called the Hula-Hula Park.
The new
guests move into their rooms in one of the five buildings that make up the
resort complex. They are sleeping two or three to a room. Journalists are not
allowed to visit them there, though it is possible to speak with them elsewhere
and to accompany them during their daily lives in Playa del Inglés.
Room 435,
Omar
When asked
to describe his life in the Waikiki, Omar replies: "Wait a sec." He
then sends video clips from his mobile phone that start with him standing in
the bathroom and brushing his teeth with a blue toothbrush. He washes up and
then heads out to the balcony to hang up his towel to dry. In the clip, he
looks not unlike a student at a theater school acting out a vacation scene, but
it is anything but holiday for Omar. He asks that his real name and room number
not be published, concerned that it could create problems with security
personnel or officials. Omar says he feels stuck.
There is an
abstract painting with a lot of yellow hanging above Omar's bed, perhaps some
kind of tropical flower. A shoulder bag, which he takes with him everywhere he
goes, is lying on his bedside table. It contains his papers, including a
confirmation from the Spanish Interior Ministry and a certificate that is
supposed to prove that he once worked as an electrician. And his last 50 euros.
Omar is in
his mid-20s, a quiet type who thinks for a beat before he says anything. On his
wrist, he is wearing one of those bracelets you get at an all-inclusive resort
that you can only remove with scissors. His room number is written on it in
black ink. Omar arrived in the port of Arguineguín, located 16 kilometers west
of Playa del Inglés, three weeks ago after spending three days on the Atlantic.
The Coast Guard pulled him out of the sea along with 22 others. More than 8,000
people like Omar arrived in the Canary Islands in November alone, part of the
more than 20,000 for the whole year.
The
pandemic has shifted the migration routes. With overland borders in Africa
largely closed, an increasing number of people are choosing the more dangerous
passage across the Atlantic. The numbers are also climbing because the
coronavirus has made life even more difficult for those already struggling to
get by. The governments of countries like Mali, Senegal and Mauretania are not
able to produce generous aid programs to help people make ends meet.
"We
all have to die somewhere," Omar says, adding that he wasn't afraid during
the journey. Once he arrived, he was given a black sweatsuit, the uniform of
the new arrivals. He immediately changed, throwing his old clothes into the
trash. He then spent a week sleeping on the ground with no running water. His
clothes were constantly damp, there was never enough food and, he says, the
lines in front of the few portable toilets took forever.
The media
took to calling the reception area at the port the "Camp of Shame."
For a time, there were around 2,000 people living there, though the tents were
only meant for 400 migrants. The press showed up, as did politicians and
refugee officials. The horrific images from the Moria refugee camp on the Greek
island of Lesbos were still fresh in people's minds.
Omar
stepped into his room in the Hawaii-themed hotel for the first time on Nov. 15,
a double room type 1, with two single beds, a TV and a bathroom with a shower.
He shares the 25-square-meter (270-square-foot) room with one other occupant.
Review from
BrbelR2013 from the Bavarian town of Eckental on Tripadvisor.com: Very nice
club hotel, perfect for family vacations, great entertainment hosts, … massages
and wellness on offer! … we will definitely come back! :)
The Waikiki
hotel is right in the heart of Playa del Inglés, one of the best-known tourist
towns on the island, with retirees playing mini-golf around the corner,
swingers visiting the nearby swinger club and German football fans rooting on
their team at the Kölschen Eck. Ever since they have been allowed to leave the
hotel, Omar and his friends have gone down to the main beach almost every day.
On their way, they pass the gay resort and the Tutti Frutti Bar, with the
hotels sporting a luminous sign reading "Frohe Weihnachten," German for
Merry Christmas.
Omar says
that he has seen hotels like the Waikiki back home in Morocco, but only from a
distance. People like him, he says, aren't allowed in.
With
"people like him," he means someone who lives with their 11-member
family in a tiny apartment. He draws the floorplan on a scrap of paper and
points to a small square in the corner. "This is where I slept": on a
mattress right next to the refrigerator. He also means someone who has learned
a trade but still lives hand-to-mouth, earning money one week but nothing the
next. Since the arrival of the coronavirus, the situation has grown even worse.
Omar says
that he was once in love and that they had wanted to get married. He probably
even could have scraped together the dowry, he says, from his periodic electrician
jobs and from driving his motorcycle taxi. "But what kind of life could I
have provided her?"
Then a man
showed up from a big city: "Someone who had everything," a house, a
car. He asked her family for her hand, Omar says, and then he never saw her
again.
From his
room's balcony, Omar looks out on palm trees and the other buildings in the
Waikiki complex, along with the large pool to the left, where all-inclusive
guests usually throw their towels onto the sunbeds. On the internet, there is a
video of this pool, shot by a guest from his balcony a while back. It shows how
the day starts at the Waikiki when the hotel is full of vacationers instead of
refugees: The tourists rush out to the pool at 8 a.m. to reserve the best
spots.
Now,
though, the pool is closed off and all is quiet. Nobody should get the
impression that migrants in Europe are living in the lap of luxury.
There are,
though, plenty of fake photos kicking around the internet allegedly showing
refugees splashing around in hotel pools. Indeed, Omar's current lodgings
provide welcome ammunition for right-wing internet trolls and populists who are
now claiming on their Facebook pages that Africans are being given "luxury
vacations for free."
"But
all I want to do is get away from here," says Omar, "and get off the
island." The Waikiki is nice, he says, "but I didn't come here to
live in a fancy hotel." All he wants, he says, is a normal life and a job
to feed his family. "How can I get from here to the mainland?" he
asks. He wants to go to Germany, he says, but he's afraid of being deported
from the Canary Islands before he even gets a chance to continue his journey.
Review from
Karsten Krüger from Dec. 5 on Tripadvisor: It's unacceptable! These people
don't have to pay anything for their stay. Why should I ever again pay money to
stay in this hotel? The hotel should change its name, maybe to Hotel Asylum
International …
Room 542,
Cheikh
The very
first thing he wants to say is: "I would like to give my thanks to all the
helpers from the Red Cross. Gran Canaria is a nice place. Good people live
here. No problems thus far." Just that he hasn't yet been able to find
work. That is the question that he goes to sleep with, and which is still there
when he wakes up: "How can I find work here?"
People like
Cheikh, who didn't come through Morocco, but instead took the long Atlantic
route from Senegal – around 1,500 kilometers across open ocean – can be
recognized by the fact that their skin is peeling off their body as though they
were badly sunburned. From their arms, from their legs. The soles of Cheikh's
feet are also peeling off, hanging beneath his feet like a pair of flipflops.
He says his feet spent two weeks in the saltwater that had collected in the
bottom of their boat.
He is
currently on his way to the beach, where he often sits in the sand, looking out
at the sea and waiting.
Cheikh says
there were 120 people on board the pirogue that took him across the ocean.
Their provisions ran out after a week, he says, and he had nothing to eat and
very little to drink for five days. He even resorted to drinking saltwater.
According
to an estimate from the International Organization for Migration, one out of 16
people who attempt the Atlantic route die. The Coast Guard has found deserted
boats on several occasions. And in October, fire broke out on a boat from
Senegal carrying 200 people. At least 140 of them lost their lives. In total,
far more than 500 people are thought to have lost their lives trying to reach
the Canary Islands in 2020 alone. Cheikh says he was protected by God.
What he
really needs, though, he says, is a decent pair of pants. He is still wearing
the same clothes he had on in the port weeks ago, he says – and you can tell he
finds it embarrassing.
At the
Waikiki, Cheikh lives in the building to the far right, where the others from
sub-Saharan African countries have been put up – from places like Mali, Guinea
and Sierra Leone. The other four buildings are reserved for people from the
Maghreb countries of North Africa. That ratio is roughly consistent with the
nationalities of the people who are currently being pulled out of the sea by
the Coast Guard.
The hotel
residents are only supposed to leave their rooms during mealtimes, and they say
that security personnel are quick to show up if someone is hanging around in
the hallways. They eat in shifts, one building at a time. Today, breakfast was
oatmeal, a bun and yoghurt.
"I
love my country, I really do," says Cheikh. "If I could feed my
family, I wouldn't be here."
He says
that when he called his family in Senegal from a phone he borrowed from another
Waikiki resident, his children didn't cry. Cheikh has a boy and a girl, both
still young, he says. But they know why their father left. He wants to help
harvesting the fields in Spain or Italy so he can send some money home.
"I'm ready," he says. "I can start right away."
Ayoub and Nabil: "It's totally normal here for
people to drink beer or whiskey."
Review from Claire A., from Dec. 8 on Tripadvisor: Now
that the owners of this hotel are participating in smuggling people from Africa
… I will never book a vacation here again … the so-called refugees are
exclusively young men from Morocco and the Sahel, some with gold chains and
almost all of them with new mobile phones.
On his way
to the beach along the Avenida de Tirma, Cheikh passes the apartment complex
belonging to Tom Smulders. They don't know each other, but their lives are
connected.
Smulders is
a 70-year-old from the Netherlands and is vice president of FEHT, the Canary
Islands hotel federation. The organization represents hotels, restaurants, golf
courses and spas, all of which are struggling. His own complex is called Corona
Verde, which isn't perhaps the best name for these times.
Smulders
has been living on the island since 1976, a well-tanned individual in a pink
shirt and Airpods in his ears, since his telephone is constantly ringing – a
function of the fact that, as spokesperson for the hotel industry, he has given
almost 50 interviews in the last several weeks.
When
Smulders talks about Gran Canaria, he says the island is a "paradise"
and starts singing the Harry Belafonte song "Island in the Sun." He
says it takes him just five minutes to get to the beach and there are plenty of
hiking, climbing and even nude sun-bathing opportunities to be had. Whatever
you want, he insists. This year, though, has only given him gray hair. His
paradise has been sullied a bit.
The
downturn actually got started back in fall 2019, with the bankruptcy of the
travel conglomerate Thomas Cook, says Smulders. Then, COVID-19 arrived, and
some 200,000 vacationers had to leave the Canary Islands within just one week
in March, he says. In early June, the first tourists started returning, only
for the Canaries to tick back up into the red level in August – "just when
I was getting the feeling: Things are finally looking up." And then, the
refugees arrived.
"The
images from the port were the worst. There was no humanitarian reception,"
he says, "it was simply chaos." The government refused to bring the
new arrivals to the mainland, in part because they feared doing so would
encourage more people to make the journey. The result, though, was that Gran
Canaria joined Lesbos and Lampedusa as European islands left to deal with the
refugees on their own. There were protests. "We don't want the same
situation as in Italy and Greece," Smulders says.
On Sept. 2,
his federation sent a circular to hotel operators on behalf of the government
and the Red Cross, called "Accommodation for Immigrants." That was
how it began.
It didn't
take long for the first hoteliers to respond. Their buildings were completely
empty anyway. Soon, 500 migrants moved into the Vistaflor, a collection of
holiday apartments. "It was ideal," says Smulders. The complex was a
bit out of the way, a place where the migrants wouldn't cross path with
tourists too much. He is eager to avoid mixing the migrants with the
vacationers, believing it to be bad for the island's image.
The head of
Vistaflor was quite honest, Smulders says. "He said: My back is against
the wall. By taking in the migrants, I'm saving my own business." The
government pays around 45 euros per night for each migrant. And the director
was again able to pay his staff, suppliers and the baker.
Now, says
Smulders, the situation is such that less than 10 percent of the 145,000 beds
on the island are occupied by tourists, with just over 4 percent of them,
around 6,000, being used by migrants.
Smulders
says that last-minute travel agencies at the airport are now sometimes hearing
things from travelers like: "But I don't want to stay in a refugee
hotel!" Other than that, though, he says, there are very few conflicts.
There was just one occasion, he relates, when he had to intervene when young
men who had been put up in an apartment complex would regularly play football
on the public field. But the pitch was right next to a bar where fathers liked
to drink a beer while watching their sons play soccer. One might wonder why
they didn't simply play together. But Smulders arranged for them to play at a
different time. "That was the solution," he says.
But as the
months went by, the port still hadn't been completely cleared and, in November,
the Waikiki also announced its decision to take in around 1,000 refugees, the
situation began to change, says Smulders. Many on Gran Canaria began saying it
was a bridge too far.
Gran Canaria joined Lesbos and Lampedusa as European
islands left to deal with the refugees on their own.
Why? Because it was too close, he says – almost right
in the middle of the tourist area, with hotels right next door. "It ruins
the vacation feeling."
Shortly before
the Waikiki made its announcement, Gran Canaria had once again been cleared for
vacationers. One might call it bad timing if it wasn't our humanitarian duty to
provide people with adequate shelter. Since the middle of December, though, the
Canaries are once again considered a corona risk area.
Smulders
adds, though, that corona is to blame for the fact that his own apartment
complex is largely empty. Thus far, he says, none of his few guests have voiced
any concern about the young men living in the Waikiki. But there is concern
that that could change.
"All
migrants are to have been moved out of the hotels by Dec. 31," he says.
That, at least, was the demand issued by his federation. They wanted the
government to take over responsibility for housing them.
That
deadline, though, wasn't met. And it still isn't totally clear where all of the
people are to be housed. The government has set up a tent camp on a former
military base near Las Palmas, but it only has enough room for 1,000 people and
the media has reported that conditions there are unsatisfactory. Allegedly, up
to 20 people are packed into just one tent and there is no light or showers
available. Additional camps are under development.
According
to a Dec. 28 report in the Spanish daily El Pais, up to 7,800 migrants and
refugees are still living in tourist facilities. A few hundred people have
since moved out of the Waikiki, says Smulders, but the hotel isn't yet empty.
Omar and Cheikh are still there.
Room 801,
Ayoub and Nabil
Once their
corona quarantine was finished, Ayoub and Nabil left their room for the first
time. Since then, they have gone swimming in the ocean every day, just like
back home in Morocco, they say, just that the waves are bigger there.
Right now,
they are sitting at the stairs up from the beach, where the tourists wash the
sand off their feet in the showers. Behind them is a bar called Zum Blauen
Engel, where a group of Germans is just starting in on the next round of beer
and has apparently settled in for an extended drinking session. It's something
that Nabil noticed soon after his arrival, he says. "It's totally normal
here for people to drink beer or whiskey." His tone isn't judgmental, it's
more one of curiosity, like a student making a trip abroad. "And the women
don't wear long robes to go swimming," says Ayoub. When the two see a
woman in a bikini, they giggle like 12-year-olds.
Ayoub is
just 16 years, at least that's what he says, and it's not hard to believe him,
with the peach fuzz on his upper lip and crooked smile. Nabil has a bit more of
an athletic build than his friend, a 17-year-old who says he is often referred
to as "the Brazilian" because of the darker shade of his skin – an
appellation that he quite likes.
Ayoub and
Nabil have known each other since childhood, spending their early years
together in a slum in the Western Saharan port city of Dakhla. The quarter was
then razed, and their families were moved into a housing project.
Nabil
brushes the hair from his forehead to show a scar that bears testimony to their
friendship. He says he got it from Ayoub when they were playing soccer as young
children. Ayoub is a goalkeeper while Nabil plays defense. They share a room at
the Waikiki.
Ayoub says
that he always dreamed of becoming an ambulance driver or a policeman. Nabil
says his dream had always been to emigrate to Europe.
"Of course I've realized that we're not welcome
by everyone."
Nabil
Now that
he's in Europe, he regularly posts videos and photos to his Facebook page. They
show Nabil on the sofa in his hotel room, Nabil on the beach promenade, Nabil
in front of the Christmas tree in the shopping center, with Spanish music in
the background. He shows a TikTok video on his mobile phone of an overloaded
refugee boat landing on a Canary Island beach full of tourists. The video is a
couple of years old, but it is still making the rounds on social media, says
Nabil. "Look at that," he says. The trip to Europe has become an
internet hit among the youngest as well.
Their
fathers are fishermen, they say, adding that they have been familiar with the
sea since they were four. With that background, they claim they weren't afraid.
Ayoub spent two-and-a-half days at sea, Nabil four. The photos on their mobile
phone make it almost look like they were on a school field trip.
Ayoub wraps
his arms around himself, his pants are still wet and he doesn't have anything
to change into. He does, though, have a plastic bag in which he carries his new
sneakers. He bought them for 25 euros in a tourist shop – his first big
purchase in Europe.
His father
sent him money for the shoes from back home. Ayoub pulls them out of the bag at
every opportunity, showing them to everybody he knows in the Waikiki. When his
family calls from Dakhla, he holds them up to the camera of his phone, like a
treasure that he dug out of the sand on a distant Atlantic island.
In the
evening, when the lights start going on one after the other in the rooms of the
Waikiki and the young men return from their excursions to the beach, lining up
to get their temperature checked by the security guards and showing their wrist
bands, you can watch the reactions of the few tourists walking past the hotel.
There's the older guy in a tanktop and sun hat, who shakes his head and
mumbles: "All these boat people, they're everywhere." There are the
two women from Münster, who are staying in the neighboring hotel: "They're
all so peaceful." The hotel where they are staying has blocked off the
wing facing the Waikiki, just to be on the safe side.
"Of
course I've realized that we're not welcome by everyone," says Nabil.
After
eating dinner in the Kalua dining room, Nabil and Ayoub sit down in their room
beneath the abstract flower and call home to their mothers. Nabil says it's
enough to just hear his mother's voice and he starts crying.
Yesterday,
a woman from the Red Cross took them aside and told them they would soon be
moved to a hostel for underage migrants. The Waikiki is nice, they say, but
they're happy to move. They heard that there is a football pitch at the new
hostel and you can learn Spanish.
Nabil says
he dreams of returning home a made man. He envisions himself driving back into
his home village in a VW Golf, a wonderful car.
A week
later, the residents of the Waikiki are asked to refrain from leaving the hotel
for 48 hours for safety reasons. A group of right-wingers had shown up in front
of a hotel in Arguineguín and started insulting and threatening the residents.
"Out with the Moors!" they yelled, and "Bastards!" Those
kinds of things.
The Port
On a
Saturday morning in December, boats have once again appeared on the Coast
Guard's radar. The police have gathered in Arguineguín to welcome the new
arrivals and the helpers from the Red Cross are there too.
Since the
removal of the controversial reception camp that had stood here for
three-and-a-half months, a temporary facility is now assembled for each new
arrival and then immediately removed. Night after night, morning after morning.
The Coast
Guard ship enters port at 9:45 a.m. carrying around 80 men from the Maghreb, along
with a few women and a couple of children. They look exhausted, with some
apparently unnerved and others taking selfies. Among them is a young girl,
perhaps three years old, with braided hair and blue socks full of holes. She
isn't wearing shoes. The helpers wrap a blanket around her shoulders. As her
mother undresses in the tent, the child looks out through a slit in the side at
her new life.
An elderly
German couple is standing at the barricade that has been set up, Johanna and
Jürgen from Stuttgart. Jürgen is wearing a straw hat. The two of them are
staying in a nearby hotel. "We saw them arrive from our window and we
thought we'd take a look." It's something you otherwise only see on
television, says Jürgen.
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