“They said I was the captain of the boat and arrested me, but that's not true.”

PalmHis name is Aliou. In 2021, he arrived in the Canary Islands on a small boat. Twenty-two days later, he was arrested, as he was considered the captain of the vessel, although he denies it. After being transferred to Palma prison, he was diagnosed with leukemia and underwent a bone marrow transplant. Along the way, he learned Spanish—he speaks it with a slight Canarian accent—and earned a kitchen assistant qualification. Since he's already been granted the third degree of imprisonment, he works in a restaurant. He's only 23, but thinks he's already "wasted a lot of time": "I don't know if I'll be able to get it back."

"I wanted to come to Spain, but not on a small boat," he says sadly. "Since there was no other way to get here, I took the boat." In Senegal (in Dakar), his life was "very hard." "I worked on a family boat, but I'd been there for a long time and wasn't earning enough money to live on," he explains. Necessity drove him to travel to Mauritania, where he spent two months waiting to board a boat: "The sea was very rough." He learned where he was headed by word of mouth. "You meet fellow countrymen, you talk to them, many people, many, wanted to make the same journey," the young man explains. He paid more than 3,000 euros for the trip: "I saved a lot." He did it accompanied by a friend who is not in the Balearic Islands, but with whom he still keeps in touch.

There were 45 people on the boat. The journey was supposed to take about four days, but it lasted a week. He particularly remembers the cold and the wind. "The clothes I was wearing were wet, and I had to endure that," he says. "You could change, but all the clothes were soaked, because it was very windy, and there was no sun to dry them." The last two days they ran out of drinking water. "We mixed sugar and seawater to be able to drink," he says. "It was very, very hard." When they arrived, they were greeted by the Red Cross and placed in a hotel. One afternoon, they arrested him: "We had gone out, showered, eaten, and suddenly the police came." They took him to jail for interrogation. "I didn't know this was going to happen to me when I arrived; it was a shock," he admits.

"I wasn't the skipper of the boat," he asserts emphatically. "Since I worked at sea, I had some experience," he explains. That's why I helped out during the voyage. But he, he insists, "paid" the same money as the rest. "There was a young man, like me, who was always by my side, and he was the one who said I was the skipper, that's why I was arrested," he laments. "It wasn't me," he insists.

Although he can't provide details of the criminal proceedings, he says he requested a transfer to Palma because he had "some countrymen" here. In prison, he got along well with everyone. "I went to the gym, to school, and in the end they let me out [for good behavior]." He proudly displays a leather belt: "I made it in a prison workshop; it's a souvenir." Between the Canary Islands and Palma, he learned to speak Spanish fluently. Then the illness struck.

"After a month in Palma, I felt very, very, very weak," he says. "At first, I thought it was because of the sport, but I felt bad even when I trained very little," he continues. "I got tired, dizzy, and I went to the infirmary, but they couldn't find out what it was," he explains. At that time, it was August 2023, and he was 21 years old. Finally, after the intervention of a social worker, he was hospitalized, first in Son Llàtzer and then in Son Espases, where they told him he was "very bad." "They gave me bags of blood every day to give me strength," he recalls. "I asked the doctor, 'Why is this happening to me?' But he told me it wasn't because of anything I had done," he says.

Sport, which he has taken up in recent years, helped him gain strength and keep his spirits up. He proudly recounts that "the doctor was amazed" to see him so fit: "Many people feel very ill after surgery, but I was already walking the same day, and I didn't vomit." He says this with a smile that, as confirmed by the medical staff who have treated him over the past few months, he has never lost. He is still undergoing cancer treatment, but he feels much better. "Thank God, I'm fine, I'm fine," he repeats.

The future

Since serving his third degree in prison, he's lived in an apartment managed by the GREC, the Penitentiary Pastoral, and Penitentiary Institutions with four other colleagues, who get along well. "We always joke around, we don't argue," he notes. He earned his kitchen assistant certification because he's always liked it: "My favorite dish is Tikka Masala." He works at the MarSenses restaurant and plans to become a model: "Many people have told me I could do that," he explains with a smile. However, his main future project is to "improve my job: "I didn't come for anything else, I came to improve my life."

At a time when the PP refuses to accept migrant minors from the Canary Islands and Vox directly and without data links the immigration that arrives in boats with crime, Aliou promises that he has never noticed racist or rejecting attitudes during his time in Spain, and he is grateful to the professionals - especially health workers, educators, and prison officers - who have looked after him: "I have learned respect, to treat people well." "I have had a very bad time, and the people who have welcomed me have treated me like a son," he concludes, and says goodbye to make lunch.