SPAIN: Cayuko is a new word which only entered the Spanish language recently.
It is the name given to the open wooden boats used by fishermen off the coast of west Africa and which are now used to carry hundreds of would-be illegal immigrants from the African mainland to the Canary Islands.
Once there, they have been led to believe, they can make their way to Europe to find work, and many of them are prepared to pay their life savings for the dangerous journey, often after travelling overland for weeks or even months to reach the coast.
What began as a trickle only a year ago has now become a veritable avalanche which is swamping all the holding facilities the Spanish authorities have provided. In August 2005 just over 300 arrived on the islands of Gran Canary, Tenerife and La Palma. Already this month, some 17,000 have come ashore - more than 1,500 of them this weekend alone. Ninety two people were rescued yesterday 40 miles off Tenerife as their cayuko was sinking.
On more than one occasion tourists have watched as a small boat is washed up on the beach and exhausted and dehydrated men, women and children collapse in the sand in front of them. They have helped and comforted them by giving them their water to drink, their picnics to eat and wrapping them in towels and rugs for warmth while waiting for the first aid workers.
Prime minister Jose Luis Rodríguez Zapatero interrupted his holiday on the neighbouring island of Lanzarote on Saturday to see the situation for himself and to offer whatever help his government could give.
Under the current law, illegal immigrants are returned to their homeland, but many of the new arrivals come without identification and refuse to divulge their nationalities. The authorities cannot deport a minor and they are obliged to look after and educate them until they reach the age of 18.
Adan Martín, the president of the regional government, showed Mr Zapatero the overcrowded immigrant centres and appealed to him to take more of the immigrants to the mainland. He also asked for an amendment to the law so that the minors could also be moved from the islands.
Until a couple of years ago the immigrants came across the Straits of Gibraltar from Morocco in small fragile boats known as pateras. Pateras only carry about 20 or 30 passengers, while some cayukos have arrived with over 200 aboard.
Morocco has now clamped down on the human tide and only a few take this route - although one boat did slip through the net yesterday morning and arrived in Almeria. The new wave of immigrants, believed to be from Senegal, Mauritania, Mali and further afield, embark on the longer and even more hazardous crossing to the Canaries from Mauritania and Senegal.