Francina Armengol, the chairwoman of Spain’s Congress of deputies, the lower of its two legislative chambers, on Tuesday said her country and Cyprus must “join forces” with the European Union to deal with migration.

Speaking during a visit to Cyprus’ Pournara migrant reception centre, she said both countries and the EU must “understand the issue of migration” and must offer both political and economic support to deal with the problem.

She said she had chosen to visit Pournara “so we could see firsthand everything that concerns immigrants, and, more generally, the reasons for their arrival on the island of Cyprus”.

Both Spain and Cyprus share common issues in the field of migration to Europe, given that we are both European countries and frontline reception countries. These are refugees who come to our countries, with all kinds of difficulties, with medical and pharmaceutical difficulties, and others,” she said.

For this reason, she added, “it is our obligation to try to intervene in the countries where the migrants are coming from, so that we can help there and be able to reduce migration”.

With this in mind, she said she had offered President Nikos Christodoulides her thanks at a meeting earlier in the day “for all the work Cyprus is doing to ensure stability in the region and to calm the region down”.

What both countries, Cyprus and Spain, are looking at is to facilitate legal migration, because, as I say, we need legal migrants,” she added.

To this end, she called for international law to be respected regarding the arrival of irregular migrants and the processing of asylum claims, and said Pournara is currently “well-organised, well structured, and really constitutes significant help for migrants”.

Cyprus’ Deputy Migration Minister Nicholas Ioannides accompanied Armengol on the trip, and said Cyprus and Spain “are two friendly countries which share many things in common, as well as common challenges in relation to migration”.

“We mentioned the steps of progress which have been made by Cyprus, the measures which have brought results, and we see them here at Pournara with the reduced number [of migrants],” he said.

He added that both countries will “continue to exchange views constructively so that we can find common solutions to our common problems, both bilaterally and within the framework of the European Union”.

On the matter of Pournara itself, he said it currently houses around 320 people – around a quarter of its current capacity of 1,200 people and well shy of its planned eventual capacity of 2,000.

“You understand that this number is very low, but let me emphasise that this is a first port of call and a reception centre. This is where migrants come to submit their request for asylum and then they go and have their stay here arranged in another way,” he said.

He added that with neighbouring Syria’s former dictator Bashar al-Assad having been overthrown, more than 900 Syrian nationals who had lodged asylum claims in Cyprus have since withdrawn them, and that around 300 have returned to Syria, with other flights being organised.

“The deputy ministry is working intensively in this direction. As the situation in the neighbouring country stabilises, we believe that the number of Syrian repatriations will also increase,” he said.