A mother gave birth to a baby girl during a migrant crossing from Africa to the Canary Islands on a small boat carrying 60 people.
Spain’s rescue service intercepted the boat off the coast of Lanzarote on Monday, finding the mother and baby both in good health.
The mother can be seen in a picture captured by the rescue team lying on the deck of the boat with her eyes closed while someone else holds her baby.
Once the small boat had be intercepted, she was assisted by medics and transferred to a hospital by helicopter along with her baby.
The rescue ship’s captain Domingo Trujillo said he knew there was a pregnant woman on board but did not expect her to have already given birth by the time he got to her.
He told TVE: “The surprise was a totally naked baby who was born 10, 15 or 20 minutes earlier.”
The Canary Islands are currently grappling with a sharp influx of migrants, with 2024 being a record breaking year for arrivals. People are mainly coming from Mali, Senegal, and Morocco using the Atlantic route – the world’s deadliest.
Last year, 73% of all illegal migration into Spain came from the Canary Islands, which saw a total of 46,843 migrant and refugee arrivals.
In the first week of 2025, over 2,000 people arrived at the Canary Islands, particularly El Hierro and Lanzarote. On Tuesday, both islands saw a combined 359 migrant arrivals from Sub-Saharan Africa on four boats.
Most of migrants arriving at the Canary Islands are from North or West Africa and travel along the Atlantic migrant route – the world’s deadliest.
In the last week of December, at least 69 people died after a boat from West Africa capsized off the coast of Morocco.
From January 1 to December 5 last year, at least 10,457 migrants died or went missing while trying to reach spain by sea, according to NGO Caminando Fronteras.
The influx was a result of years of conflict in the Sahel region, unemployment, and the effect of climate change on farming communities.
