Moment exhausted migrant is plucked from the sea after trying to cross treacherous 36-mile wide Strait of Gibraltar in flippers and a rubber ring

Daily Mail​

5 days ago

This is the moment an exhausted migrant is rescued by sailors after trying to cross the perilous Strait of Gibraltar with flippers and a rubber ring.
The man, believed to be from Morocco, was spotted by the crew of a passing sailboat around 12 miles off the coast of Malaga, Spain on Saturday.
Footage shows a sailor shouting: 'We have spotted a castaway and we are getting ready to pick him up', as the man begins to come into view.
The migrant, who is strapped to a rubber ring, is seen swimming towards the vessel, as crew members throw him a rope to hold onto.
He grabs onto the cord and is pulled by sailors onto the boat and flops onto his back motionless with a pained expression on his face.
One passenger says: 'Water, water', as he pats the migrant on the back as he tells him, 'don't worry'.
After plucking the man from the sea, the sailors brought him a change of clothes, a blanket, water and some food.
His rescuers, a family from southern Spain who were on their way to the Balearic Islands, initially confused the migrant for a bird or large fish before seeing it was a man in distress.
The family contacted coastguard, who mobilised a vessel to collect the migrant from the sailboat before transferring him to the port of Malaga.
His whereabouts and condition were not immediately clear this morning, but he was reportedly severely dehydrated when he was first rescued.
It is not exactly known where he started his treacherous journey, but he was found around 13 miles to the south of the Spanish resort of Benalmadena between Torremolinos and Funegirola on the Costa del Sol when he was first spotted.
The Strait of Gibraltar separates North Africa from Europe and it is a common route used by scores of illegal immigrants to reach Spain.
In 2024, Spain received a record number of migrants who crossed illegally via sea, with more than 61,000 people having arrived on boat.
In a recently-published report, an organisation called Caminando Fronteras said it had recorded the deaths of nearly 2,000 migrants trying to reach Spain by sea from Africa in the first five months of this year.
Fifty-two of those had been making the Strait of Gibraltar crossing, the group said as it revealed the deadliest route was the one from Western Africa to the Canary Islands.
Of the 1,865 people recorded as dead or missing, it said 112 were women and 342 children.
Caminando Fronteras also revealed 38 boats had disappeared with all people on board between the start of January and end of May 2025.
The astonishing rescue comes after a Moroccan man was rescued eight miles from land by a passenger ferry as he tried to make the treacherous crossing in the inner tube of a lorry tyre.
Jose Maraver, second in command at the coastguard coordination centre in the southern Spanish town of Tarifa, said at the time: 'He was midday between Spain and Morocco when he was picked up, around eight miles south-east of Tarifa.
'He would have drifted further towards the Mediterranean if he hadn't been spotted and would never have made it to dry land without help.
'He was lucky the passenger ferry that spotted him didn't go over him. He would have been very low in the water and difficult to see.
'The area he was in is a very busy shipping channel and very dangerous for someone like this man in the precarious situation he was in.'
The migrant's rescue on Saturday also comes shortly after Spain faced violent clashes between far-right groups and police over immigration.
Clashes in Torre-Pacheco in the Murcia region in southeastern Spain took place earlier this month after an elderly resident was beaten up by unknown assailants, which led to a call by far-right groups to seek retribution on the area's large migrant community.
A major police presence was moved into Torre-Pacheco, which has a population of roughly 42,000. About a third of its residents are of foreign origin, according to local government figures.
Large numbers of migrants also work in the surrounding area as day laborers in agriculture, a major driver of the regional economy.