At least 41 people have died trying to reach the Spanish enclave of Ceuta after as many as 50,000 migrants entered the tiny territory from Morocco in a matter of hours, triggering a political crisis for the Madrid government and unleashing a barrage of criticism from other EU countries.
The large influx of people arriving in Ceuta by swimming across from neighbouring Morocco or scaling the border fence has caught the city of 85,000 off guard and resulted in what one local police association called a “serious humanitarian crisis”.
Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, who arrived in Ceuta on Friday, described the influx as “a violation of Spain’s territorial integrity” and said he would use all the state resources at his disposal to guarantee the safety of the people of Ceuta.
He attributed the mass crossing to “human trafficking mafias” that had taken advantage of a decision by Spain’s supreme court, which recently ruled that those intercepted at sea while trying to enter Ceuta, or Spain’s other north African enclave of Melilla, could not be summarily returned under special rules.
Sánchez said: “That has spread like wildfire during these last few hours through the networks of mafias that traffic in human beings and has produced an avalanche of the characteristics and dimension that we experienced yesterday.”
Sánchez, who is under pressure from political opponents and other European countries to come up with a swift and comprehensive response, said a temporary reception centre would be established to facilitate the documentation, registration, triage and “expedited” expulsion of people with no legal claim to be in Spain.
He also said the government would erect a visible barrier – a line of buoys – near the breakwater at Ceuta’s Tarajal beach to make it clear where the border was, to legally comply with the court’s ruling.
Spain’s interior ministry said about 25,000 people had voluntarily crossed the border back into Morocco during the course of Friday.
The latest incident dwarfs the last mass border crossing in May 2021, when 10,000 people entered the territory over the course of two days by taking advantage of a loosening of border controls by Morocco.
That crossing came amid heightened tensions between Madrid and Rabat over Spain’s decision to allow the leader of the Western Sahara independence movement, the Polisario Front, to be treated for Covid-19 in Spain. Morocco and the Polisario Front both lay claim to Western Sahara, which was under Spanish rule until 1975, when colonial authorities handed over the territory to Morocco and Mauritania.
That diplomatic crisis ended in 2022 when Madrid reversed its longstanding policy of neutrality and backed Morocco’s plan for Western Sahara – a move that had caused a diplomatic rift between Spain and Algeria, which had supported the Polisario group.
Sánchez visited Algiers on 20 July – the first such visit by a Spanish head of government in four years – marking a thaw in relations with Algeria.
Moroccan government sources told the Europa Press news agency that the surge of people entering Ceuta was down to “criminal organisations”, and insisted that Rabat’s cooperation with Spain remained “exemplary”.
On Thursday evening, Spain’s interior ministry announced that 60 members of the armed forces would be deployed to Ceuta, along with an additional 30 Guardia Civil officers. “The armed forces will reinforce the Guardia Civil in the exercise of its powers and any others that may be necessary to maintain security in the city of Ceuta,” the ministry said.
But the situation is evolving rapidly as the city struggles to cope with the massive number of arrivals.
Rachid Sbihi, who leads a local workers’ association representing Guardia Civil officers, described the situation as a “serious humanitarian crisis”. He said: “People are still entering. The reinforcements that have arrived are only helping the injured and other humanitarian efforts.”
Without shelter, thousands of people including unaccompanied children had been left sleeping in parks and on pavements, while others roamed the streets aimlessly, Sbihi said. “It’s chaotic,” he added.
Among those who died, many drowned, but some were killed in a crush to cross the breakwater fence at Tarajal beach, Sbihi said.
Video footage on Thursday showed crowds of people walking around the breakwaters at Tarajal beach on to local roads. While most appeared to be young men, there were also families with women and small children.
“Viva España!” some shouted to a freelance photographer working for the Associated Press. It was not immediately clear what had prompted so many people to cross to Ceuta.
Ceuta and Melilla have the EU’s only land border with Africa. Both cities periodically experience surges in attempted crossings by people seeking to reach Europe.
Juan Jesús Vivas, the mayor-president of Ceuta, demanded the deployment of additional police and troops “to guarantee the inviolability of the frontier” and citizens’ safety. He also called on the central government to declare a national emergency over the crossings.
But the government rejected calls for the declaration of a national emergency, saying such emergencies could not be declared over migration issues, and could be declared only in response to dire meteorological events – such as the current wildfires – or in the face of a volcanic or nuclear threat.
Events in Ceuta have led some other EU countries to issue threats or rebukes.
Spain’s foreign minister, José Manuel Albares, summoned Italy’s ambassador to Madrid on Friday after Giorgia Meloni’s far-right government called for Spain to be suspended from the Schengen free-movement zone.
Meloni said Italy was prepared to take “extraordinary measures” to defend its borders, claiming that the “shocking” scenes from Ceuta demonstrated that “illegal immigration poses a real threat to the security of Europe’s borders”.
Meloni, whose government has been struggling to regain traction since it lost a referendum in March on an overhaul of the judiciary, appears to be exploiting the incident for political gain before general elections next year in which she faces competition from a new hard-right rival, Roberto Vannacci. She has made security her key political offering.
Italy’s foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, blamed the situation in Ceuta on the Sánchez government’s decision to offer a now-closed scheme to regularise the status of more than 1 million undocumented migrants and asylum seekers. He said the programme had incentivised human trafficking and was “profoundly wrong”.
Tajani’s remarks prompted a sharp response from Albares, who said the comments were “unbecoming” and accused Italy of “partisan demagoguery”.
The French interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, said he had given instructions for the strengthening of controls at the Spanish border.
The former French prime minister Michel Barnier was more outspoken, saying France “cannot suffer the consequences of its neighbours’ migration choices”. He also appeared to criticise Spain’s regularisation scheme, saying: “If a member state makes decisions that create a pull factor for migration, we must be able to immediately protect our borders … Mastering immigration is a condition of sovereignty, security and trust between European states.”
The Swedish prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, urged Spain to “act swiftly to regain control of the situation and fulfil its commitments within Schengen cooperation”.
The Finnish interior minister, Mari Rantanen, said that as “Spain has completely failed to protect the Schengen Area’s external border”, all EU countries should support Italy’s proposal to suspend its Schengen status.
In Spain, the opposition People’s party (PP) has called on Sánchez to come up with a tough response, saying the small military and police reinforcements announced on Thursday night were insufficient.
In a post on X, the PP’s leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, wrote: “People have continued to arrive in Ceuta throughout the night, and those on the ground describe an occupied city, with nothing sufficient being done to prevent it.”
The far-right Vox party, meanwhile, called the incident “an invasion”.
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