Woman gives birth on migrant boat bound for Spain’s Canary Islands

By Alyssa McMurtry

OVIEDO, Spain (AA) - A woman gave birth on a migrant boat trying to reach Spain’s Canary Islands, Spanish coast guards said Wednesday.

On Jan. 6, Spanish authorities were alerted to an inflatable boat carrying more than 60 migrants drifting in waters near the island of Lanzarote. Rescuers were informed that a pregnant woman was aboard.

“And what was our surprise but a totally naked baby on board, who had been born 10, 15, 20 minutes earlier,” Domingo Trujillo, the captain of the rescue ship, told Spanish broadcaster TVE on Wednesday.

The woman and baby were in stable condition but were flown by helicopter to a Lanzarote hospital.

“Our crews in the Canary Islands have had an intense start to the year,” Spain’s Civil Guard posted on X, alongside a photo of the newborn baby on the migrant boat.

According to Canary Islands broadcaster RTVC, more than 2,000 migrants have reached the islands’ shores since the start of 2025.

This came after 2024 saw a record number of migrant arrivals in Spain, with 63,970 people entering Spanish territory irregularly by land or sea. Of those, nearly 47,000 made the perilous journey to the Canary Islands.

Despite the current intensity of arrivals, Trujillo said it was the third time he had attended to a baby born on a migrant ship. He even cut an umbilical cord during a rescue in 2020.

“It was rescuing in a terrible situation in which no one would ever want to be born,” he said.

However, Trujillo noted that meeting these babies has offered moments of beauty amid a job that is often devastating.

“Sometimes in this job, you have to remove corpses that have been absolutely destroyed. It’s something that really affects us,” he added.

In late 2024, Spanish NGO Caminando Fronteras estimated that nearly 10,000 people died trying to reach the Canary Islands last year, making it one of the most dangerous migrant routes in the world.