Improved naval patrols have more than halved the flow of migrants sailing to Spain from Africa in the first quarter this year compared to 2006, Spanish and European officials said yesterday.
Last year more than 31,000 illegal migrants hoping for new lives in Europe reached Spain's Canary Islands - six times more than in 2005 - after Spain and Morocco blocked easier routes into Spain's north African territories.
Spain's Socialist government had feared another politically-damaging wave of migrants this year.
But officials said patrols by the European Union's new Frontex border agency of the waters off Spain and west Africa, together with repatriation agreements Madrid has extracted from African governments, have dramatically cut the flow.
The number of boat-borne migrants arriving at Canary Island beaches dropped by 60 per cent in the first three months of the year to 1,525 from 3,914 in the same period in 2006, a government representative in the Canaries said yesterday.
"Very low numbers of illegal migrants arriving at the Canary Islands and more than a thousand human lives saved - that is the outcome," Frontex executive director Ilkka Laitinen said of the EU operation. Frontex launched its patrols in August last year.
EU lawmakers backed a plan on Wednesday to set up a rapidly-deployable force of border guards to help states such as Spain, Italy and Malta deal with sudden influxes of illegal migrants.
Migrants risk voyages of up to 2,000 km from the African coast, often in unseaworthy vessels, in the hope of reaching the wealthy 27-nation bloc. Spanish officials have said some 6,000 died en route to the Canary Islands last year alone.
In some cases the tensions fuelled by their desire to cross are beginning to show.
Africans on a fishing boat threw cans of burning petrol at a Spanish police patrol attempting to intercept them last Sunday, police said, after throwing fruit, pieces of wood and shoes failed to deter the guards.
It was the first time police had been attacked by migrants, a police spokesman said yesterday.