A migrant camp in woodland beside Tenerife’s northern airport is taking new arrivals every day from vessels launched from the north coast of Africa, residents of the facility have told the Express.

       Tensions on the island over the island’s “overpopulation” reached boiling point earlier this month when a huge protest took over the main town of Santa Cruz, with locals demanding limits on the number of people coming to the island.

       Locals told the Express they feel as if foreigners are taking over everywhere; from buying high-value property to squatting in historic caves.

       Those challenges are in addition to the responsibility the island has for housing thousands of migrants who have travelled by small boat from the coast of Africa.

       Last month figures from Spain’s Ministry of the Interior showed that, since the beginning of the year, 12,393 migrants had landed in the Canary Islands on 190 boats, five times more than for the same period last year.

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       Many of those landing in the Canaries are transferred to a large and controversial camp on the outskirts of San Cristobal De La Laguna.

       The scale of the 2,000-capacity facility was evident when the Express visited the area. Migrants could be seen in large numbers making the hour-long trek from the camp to the centre of town.

       Near the gates behind which new arrivals sleep in white tents, we met a group of migrants who had all arrived that week.

       Three young men from Mali, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said they arrived four days earlier on a boat from Africa.

       “We are leaving [Mali] because there is a war,” a 30-year-old man told us. “We want to stay here in Spain.

       “They treat us well in the camp, the conditions are OK.”

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       The trio who had travelled together included two teenagers of 17 and 19. They told us that in addition to the Malians in the camp there were migrants from Senegal, Morocco, Guinea and Bangladesh.

       Although they were complimentary about their treatment, the camp in San Cristobal De La Laguna has been the subject of controversy.

       In November 2023, Reuters reported that migrant children were being “treated like adults” at the camp which had meant some of the kids were forced to “fend for themselves almost immediately”.

       Canary Islands president Fernando Clavijo told the news agency the mix-ups were because the Spanish archipelago was overwhelmed by the record 32,000 migrants who arrived last year.

       "We have neither the resources nor the calm to deal with the avalanche coming in," he told Reuters.