VALENCIA
\nA migrant rescue boat turned away by Italy and Malta arrived at the Spanish port of Valencia on Sunday, ending a gruelling voyage which has made it a symbol of Europe\u2019s failure to agree on immigration.<\/p>\n
Spain swooped to help 629 mainly sub-Saharan Africans on board the Aquarius last week after Italy\u2019s new government, asserting its anti-immigrant credentials, refused to let it dock. Spain\u2019s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who took office two weeks ago, took the opportunity to show a more liberal stance.<\/p>\n
But the plight of the Aquarius, run by Doctors Without Borders with Franco-German charity SOS Mediterranee, highlighted the European Union\u2019s failure to agree on how to manage the huge influx of people fleeing poverty and conflict.<\/p>\n
In Valencia, officials in white protective suits and masks greeted the migrants as they debarked and police started identifying them and processing their information.<\/p>\n
The Aquarius arrived carrying 106 people rescued from unstable boats near Libya. The others had been transferred to an Italian coast guard vessel and a ship belonging to the Italian navy to make the journey safer.<\/p>\n
The coast guard boat was the first to arrive, docking in the eastern port with 274 on board just after dawn.<\/p>\n
Shouts and singing erupted on the ship as the migrants on board saw Valencia on the horizon, Spanish journalist Gabriela Sanchez tweeted from another boat travelling alongside it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
VALENCIA A migrant rescue boat turned away by Italy and Malta arrived at the Spanish port of Valencia on Sunday, ending a gruelling voyage which has made it a symbol of Europe\u2019s failure to agree on immigration. Spain swooped to help 629 mainly sub-Saharan Africans on board the Aquarius last week after Italy\u2019s new government, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34493,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34492"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34492\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34494,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34492\/revisions\/34494"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}