Caritas in the Canary Islands: ‘The Church is present where the state is not'

Pope Leo is arriving in the Canary Islands on the 11th of June. Having already visited Madrid and Barcelona, he will now spend one day in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and another in Tenerife.

The final stage of his six-day journey Apostolic Journey to the Iberian Pensinsula will center on migration—an important topic for the region as about 24% of the population in Las Palmas alone is migrants.

Over the last year, the Spanish Ministry of the Interior recorded a massive drop in the number of migrant arrivals during the first three months of 2026 compared to 2025—due to several agreements signed between Spain and West African countries in recent years to limit the number of migrants reaching the Canary Islands. This, in turn, has shifted migration patterns, leading many to land in the Balearic Islands and the enclave of Ceuta instead.

But this has not eliminated the need for support and care for the migrants who have already made the treacherous journey to the islands.

That is where Caritas steps in.

Presenting their Institutional Report for 2025, Cáritas Diocesana de Canarias (Diocesan Caritas of Canary) stressed the urgency in improving the situation on the Islands as the country-wide statistics (GDP, inflation rates, employment figures, income rates) are not reaching those most in need.

Rather, they warned the most vulnerable “are excluded from a system that does not respond” to them.

As Secretary General of Cáritas Diocesana de Canarias Caya Suárez Ortega stressed in a conference in Rome on May 20, “the Church is present where the state is absent.”