Videos from the Spanish enclave of Ceuta on Thursday showed hundreds of people swimming across a sliver of Mediterranean water on inner tubes and buoys, walking around the breakwaters of Tarajal beach, and rushing through a broken border gate as young men shouted “Viva España!”
Event Context
By Friday, the Spanish interior ministry said at least 18 migrants had died attempting the crossing, up from an earlier count of nine, and the surge had prompted the government to deploy the armed forces to reinforce the border.
Interviews on the ground suggest the more immediate driver may have been rumours. A young man who told AFP he had walked around 70 kilometres from Tangier said he had set out “after having heard that the border had been opened at the Bab Sebta frontier post”.
Mauricio Valiente, who directs the Spanish Commission for Refugees and whose lawyers are working in Ceuta, told Reuters that the migrants crossing into the enclave were of Moroccan and sub-Saharan origin, and included families.
Ceuta is separated from Morocco by a fortified land border and a narrow stretch of Mediterranean water.
Fatima Mahli, 23, from the northern city of Tetouan, was sitting with her two daughters on a patch of grass beside the road to the crossing on Friday morning. Her husband, she said, had left before dawn to try to swim to Ceuta. “I was hoping to cross as a family but my husband woke up early and went first, swimming,” she said.
Five years earlier, in May 2021, more than 8,000 people from Morocco and sub-Saharan countries poured into Ceuta in just two days after Moroccan authorities dropped their border controls.
Juan Jesús Vivas, the head of Ceuta’s regional government and a member of the opposition People’s Party, called on the Spanish government to declare a state of emergency on grounds of national security, and to deploy the army to the border. The interior ministry declined to declare an emergency, saying legislation covering national emergencies does not consider migration flows a risk to national security. It said government agencies were “coordinating to respond with speed and efficacy to the situation in Ceuta”.
Team Analysis
Spanish state television TVE reported that between 2,000 and 3,000 people had crossed into Ceuta on Thursday alone — one of the largest single-day surges since 2021 into the small autonomous city of 85,000 residents.
Ceuta, a Spanish possession since 1580, is perched on a historical isthmus on the Mediterranean coast of north Africa. It is one of only two Spanish autonomous cities on the continent, along with Melilla some 400 kilometres to the east.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s socialist government, which has taken a broadly pro-migration line, has sent 200 specialised police officers and 60 troops from the mainland to reinforce the Civil Guard.
Arrivals had been rising for several days before Thursday. Ceuta’s local government had warned on Wednesday that reception centres were already overwhelmed, with hundreds of people sleeping on the streets after more than 1,500 migrants entered the territory over the previous week. By Thursday morning, video footage was showing crowds — believed to be mainly Moroccans, but also families from sub-Saharan Africa — pushing past the Tarajal border and onto local roads.
“The Tarajal border was opened under unusual circumstances this morning and people crossed,” Achraf Maimouni of the Moroccan Association for Human Rights told the Associated Press, describing the situation as “exceptional”.
A Guardia Civil spokesperson told Reuters: “It has been a slow trickle since the Supreme Court’s ruling, but today has been an explosion.” The ruling — from Spain’s Supreme Court earlier in July held that migrants intercepted at sea while trying to reach Ceuta or Melilla cannot be summarily returned to Morocco under the enclaves’ “border rejection” regime.
Ceuta has been under Spanish sovereignty since 1580, and is situated on the northern coast of Morocco. Its 85,000 residents form a mixed community of Christians and Muslims, and of Spanish and Moroccan citizens and day workers, who live in relative harmony behind a fortified border fence.
Along with Melilla — the larger Spanish territory some 400 kilometres east — Ceuta forms one of the European Union’s two land borders with the African continent. Ceuta’s frontier with Morocco runs about eight kilometres, guarded by a multi-layered fence built up since the 1990s.
For migrants from Morocco and sub-Saharan Africa, the two enclaves are the shortest route to Europe by geography, though not by numbers: arrivals into Spain via the Canary Islands and Balearic Islands are generally much higher, AP reported.
Those who reach Ceuta or Melilla are either immediately turned back or held in migrant shelters, from which they can apply for asylum in Spain.
Ceuta’s authorities have publicly linked this week’s surge to a Spanish Supreme Court ruling earlier in July, which held that migrants intercepted at sea cannot be summarily returned under the enclaves’ “border rejection” regime, through which authorities have long sent back people caught crossing. The ruling does not apply to those who enter by land, such as by climbing over the fence.
Migrants attempting to reach the enclave from the Moroccan side typically take one of a few routes: swimming or floating on inner tubes about five kilometres from the Moroccan town of Fnideq to Ceuta’s shore, a shorter sea crossing from the nearby town of Belyounech, or an attempt to breach the fortified land border fence and force entry through Tarajal — known as Bab Sebta on the Moroccan side — Ceuta’s only open pedestrian-and-vehicle crossing with Morocco. Melilla has its own separate land crossing further east, at Beni Ansar.
On Thursday, groups of young people were seen walking north on a highway some 150 kilometres south of Ceuta in the hope of reaching Spanish territory, and traffic had clogged the roads into Fnideq well into the night.
Those who succeed in reaching Ceuta describe difficult, sometimes deadly crossings.
Jadid Zacaria, still wet from the sea when he spoke, said: “It was very tough. The police tried to stop us. But our will and determination allowed us to come here.” Another migrant, who declined to be named, told Reuters he had been caught in a stampede along a narrow coastal route. “I feared for my life,” he said.
Those who did not make it turned back exhausted. Brahim, 32, who gave only one name, said he had come from Tangier hoping to cross through the gate but found it effectively shut. “I was late,” he said.
That incident was widely interpreted at the time as retaliation from Rabat for Spain’s decision to allow Brahim Ghali — leader of the pro-independence Polisario Front, which has for decades claimed to represent the Sahrawi people of Western Sahara, a territory Morocco claims as its own — to receive medical treatment at a hospital in the European country.
Tensions were defused only after Sánchez shifted Spain’s long-standing position on Western Sahara and met with Morocco’s King Mohammed VI the following year.
Morocco’s interior ministry has not publicly commented on Thursday’s crossings. A Moroccan official told AFP that Rabat and Madrid had agreed to “strengthen coordination and efforts to deal with these flows”, and had committed to reviewing measures for the repatriation, as soon as possible, of everyone who had entered Ceuta illegally.
Match Outlook
Some in Morocco are sceptical of both the explanations. Activists have expressed doubt that the court ruling could be behind the surge, arguing that most migrants would have had no knowledge of a Spanish legal decision, the AP reported.
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Dozens have died this year attempting to reach the enclave, according to local authorities. As of July 15, nearly 3,000 migrants had entered Ceuta by land or sea this year, according to the Spanish government’s estimate.
The Sánchez government blamed the “exploitation by mafias and criminal organisations” of that ruling for the trigger, according to Reuters. But its critics point to Spain’s broader migration policy, including a recently launched programme to provide legal status for some 500,000 undocumented migrants, which has drawn applications double that number.
In Ceuta, many shopkeepers had closed for the day. Enrique Serrano, who runs a women’s clothing store, said businesses were organising self-defence measures because they believed police resources would be insufficient. “I’m not opening this afternoon because the situation is extremely tense … The first thing I have to do is protect my business and my family,” he said.
