In a three-storey building in a residential neighbourhood in Gran Canaria, about an hour’s drive from the airport, more than a dozen teenage Senegalese boys in colourful, flowing robes sit in a circle, soulfully chanting supplications. Behind them, girls sit with their heads covered, praying. On the top-floor terrace a feast of steaming rice, meat and vegetable gravy is being prepared.

It is a bright Sunday afternoon in February. The young people are mostly asylum seekers from Senegal, who live in detention centres where conditions can be brutal, according to Spanish human rights groups.

Senegalese made up a significant proportion of the record number of migrant arrivals to the Canary Islands last year. Nearly 47,000 people reached the Spanish archipelago in 2024 via the increasingly deadly Atlantic migration route from Africa.