Europe’s new migrant hotspot races to cope with surging deaths

Two years ago forensic pathologist Modesto Martinez, 68, moved to the tiny Canary Island of El Hierro with an eye to retiring. Instead, he’s been called out day and night to deal with dead African migrants, as they arrive by sea in increasing numbers.

“I thought El Hierro would be quieter, with two or three deaths a year,” said Martinez, who came from nearby Tenerife, as he drove his Humvee car on a windy October Sunday to a funeral home to autopsy another body.

So far this year, 33 irregular migrants have arrived dead or died shortly after reaching El Hierro, according to official data. In 2023, the number was 11. In 2022, there was one.

The number of migrants arriving from the West African coast in the Spanish archipelago is running at all-time highs. But the rate of migrants going missing or dying on the voyage is growing five times faster, the latest available data shows.

Martinez is the only forensic pathologist on El Hierro, which has a population of 11,400 and is a rising destination for migrants at a time when overall irregular arrivals to Europe have declined.

As some European countries crack down hard on migration, the pathologist’s predicament underscores the heightened risks being taken by those impelled to try to make a new life for themselves, as well as the dark months endured by their families seeking news of them.

The body that Martinez was about to examine was male, African, aged between 30 and 35. Like thousands of others, he had made a treacherous Atlantic crossing of roughly 2,000 km (1,242 miles) from West Africa, crammed into an open-topped boat.

He died the day before, apparently of hypothermia caused by many hours in cold, wet conditions without shelter.

So far this year around 20,000 irregular migrants have arrived on El Hierro, according to the Red Cross. That’s about half the total of more than 40,000 who reached the Canary Islands archipelago over the period — itself a new record.

Migrant arrivals to the Canaries rose 12% between January and October, according to Spain’s interior ministry. But the number of dead or disappeared was up 61% in the same period to 891, according to estimates by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

It says the route is the second-deadliest in the world and since only partial data is available, its estimates are conservative. The Red Cross believes the majority of deceased migrants never even reach the Canaries, but either drown or their dead bodies are thrown overboard.

Spain has no official database of dead migrants: It only counts those arriving alive, said an interior ministry spokesperson.

“The causes of death are almost always the same: dehydration, hypothermia and drinking seawater,” said Martinez.

Migrants barely eat or drink potable water in the roughly six-day crossing, Martinez said – when he opens a corpse he doesn’t find any food remains, and any trace of water “smells like seawater.”

In this case, El Hierro’s authorities had a lead on the man’s identity. Another migrant who arrived on the same boat had come forward, said he was a relative, and that the dead man came from Senegal and his name was Bathie Barry.

Confirming the identities of the dead can take months. Most migrants throw their ID cards overboard before reaching shore for fear of deportation, said a Spanish security source. The logic is that if they are unidentified, it will be harder for authorities to prove their country of origin and send them back.

Martinez noted in the autopsy report that the deceased had several teeth broken and missing.