MORE THAN 1,800 people have died trying to reach Spain in just the first five months of this year, a study released today reveals.

From January through to the end of May 2025, a total of 1,865 people died in 113 tragic incidents, the Spanish activists network Caminando Fronteras published in a report today.

The report — entitled Monitoring the Right To Life on the Euro-African Western Border — found that 112 women and 342 children from 22 countries were among the dead. 

The Atlantic route — in which people try to reach Spain's Canary Island in unsafe boats from Morocco, Western Sahara, Mauritania and even as far south as Senegal and Gambia — was the deadliest route to the country by far, claiming the lives of 1,482 people.

Migration control policies, the report says, and “the erosion of life-saving standards at sea were decisive factors in 47 per cent of the tragedies.”

“Other factors directly affecting the right to life include: failure to initiate or act on search-and-rescue operations despite knowing the boats’ positions, territorial disparities in the application of protection protocols, poor co-ordination between countries, lack of investigation into the causes and consequences of shipwrecks, extreme precarity of the vessels and departures under adverse weather conditions.”

Research co-ordinator Helena Maleno said: “Although the numbers have decreased compared to the same period last year, we cannot normalise these figures.”

“That is why we must continue to demand that countries protect human life above migration control measures.”