Vox has blamed Spain’s ‘encouragement of the pull effect’ after the bodies of three young men believed to be migrants were recovered off the Costa del Sol.

The comments from the party’s Andalucia leader Manuel Gavira came just hours after Maritime Rescue (Salvamento Maritimo) found the corpses floating in waters off Estepona and Manilva.

Although the victims have not yet been formally identified and authorities have not confirmed their nationalities, investigators believe they may have been migrants who attempted to swim from Morocco to Ceuta before being swept away by sea currents.

In a post on X, Gavira linked the deaths to the Spanish government’s immigration policy.

‘This is also the most terrible face of an irresponsible migration policy that fuels false expectations and pushes thousands of people to risk their lives on our shores,’ he said.

‘Those who have spent years encouraging the pull effect should also explain its consequences.’

The so-called ‘pull effect’ is the idea that introducing a mass regularisation scheme for undocumented migrants encourages more illegal immigration.

It comes after Pedro Sanchez launched such a scheme earlier this year, with plans to initially regularise 500,000 undocumented immigrants, although the final number has far surpassed that.

According to Salvamento Maritimo, the bodies were recovered between 2.30pm and 8.30pm on Tuesday.

One was found 22 nautical miles east of Estepona, another at a mussel farm off Estepona, and the third near Manilva, according to the government’s representative in Malaga province.

All three bodies were transported to Estepona port aboard the rescue vessel Salvamar Gadir before being transferred to the Institute of Legal Medicine in Malaga for post-mortem examinations.

Police sources said the deceased were three young men who were not carrying identification.

The investigation into their identities and the circumstances of their deaths remains ongoing.