Last month, an agreement was reached resulting in a draft law to move 4,000 minors from the Canary Islands to the mainland to ease the burden on the island group. That law is yet to be passed following parliamentary processes, and could at the earliest be signed into law next week -- if no amendments and changes are required, reported the Spanish news agency EFE.

This draft was then followed last week by a direct Supreme Court injunction, demanding immediate action in 1,008 cases specifically, saying that the central government had to assume responsibility within ten days for these 1,008 unaccompanied minors who are currently housed in the archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean.

Madrid says it will comply with this recent Supreme Court injunction, with Spain's Minister of Territorial Policy Angel Victor Torres stressing, however, that it was impossible to adhere to the order "overnight" as that ten-day period is now about to expire. 

Torres also claimed that there was a certain scope for interpretation as to what action exactly had to be taken in the 1,008 cases.

Read AlsoSpain: More than 4,000 unaccompanied minors to be distributed nationwide

Hundreds of unaccompanied children in limbo

The minister highlighted the fact that the court order itself did not specify that the minors had to be removed from the island group but rather that merely the responsibility of taking care of them would be shifted.

Torres noted in this context that the Supreme Court order merely states that the unaccompanied minors "must be in the national system" without stating explicitly that this required them to be physically taken elsewhere.

The minister added that whatever specific action needs to be taken should therefore be assessed on a case by case basis.

Read AlsoCanary Islands: Spain races to house unaccompanied minors

The president of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, meanwhile rejected Torres' interpretation, stating that the overall best "interest of the minor must prevail" in each case.

Clavijo said that the Supreme Court injunction had correctly identified that one of the biggest threats to the welfare of these child migrants was the present state of overcrowding in the Canary Islands, adding that there simply was no scope for interpretation.

"(T)hey have to leave the Canary Islands because the overcrowded situation makes it impossible for them to stay here," Clavijo wrote on X.

"(T)he State is still determined that they stay in the Canary Islands," he added, stressing that the issue of unaccompanied minors could not be solved by simply giving the archipelago more money.

Currently, there are close to 6,000 unaccompanied children and adolescents in the Canary Islands, where reception capacities are fewer than 1,000.

Read AlsoSpain's restrictive asylum system: Long waits, low acceptance rates

Setbacks during final stretch of signing new law

At this point, it also remains unclear whether the 1,008 unaccompanied minors highlighted in the Supreme Court decision are included in the greater number of 4,000 minors required to be moved or not.

Torres merely has indicated that the two "are different issues" and that his focus was to get on with getting the draft law, now in its final stage, passed as quickly as possible.

Clavijo said he was confident that the draft will be signed into law but also accused certain politicians in Madrid of using delay tactics, such as providing incomplete information on what capacities their own constituencies might have for the reception of minors from the Canaries.

According to Clavijo, this amounts to a "perpetuation of the violation" of the rights of minors, holding the central government responsible for demanding complete and timely information on the capacities of all autonomous regions of Spain.

Torres indicated that the communities that have submitted incomplete data will have to make clarifications to the Ministry of Children's Affairs, and that the government will soon require those that have not sent any information at all yet to do so.

According to Torres, certain autonomous governments that appear to manipulate data in order to hinder or delay the transfer of unaccompanied minors to the mainland could be taken to court and forced to comply, once the draft is signed into law.

Read Also Canary Islands: Deaths, arrivals and the ongoing debates over redistributing young migrants

with EFE