Ceuta–Lessons Learned 2 Weeks Later

On July 30, up to 80,000 people crossed illegally from Morocco into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. They swam or climbed the fence separating the North African country from a territory Spain has claimed since the 15th century. Most were young men. Most were Moroccans, but hundreds came from sub-Saharan Africa.

As many as 100 people died attempting the swim. Many migrants were expelled, but thousands hid in the hills around the town. Some migrants attempted to rob local businesses or homes, vandalized property, or caused disturbances. Local authorities report that several girls, some under 14, were raped in areas where migrants were detained or congregated.

Two weeks later, thousands of illegal migrants remain in Ceuta. Some of them are demanding to be taken to mainland Spain. The immediate crisis is waning but could repeat at any time.

What happens now? For the Daily Signal, immigration expert Simon Hankinson spoke to Spanish expert Juan A. Soto, founder of Fortius Consulting.

Signal: Juan, how many illegal immigrants will likely remain in Ceuta or be taken to the Spanish mainland?

Soto: Nobody knows. Official estimates speak of 2,500; the city’s president, Juan Vivas, says 5,000. Underneath the numbers sit two legally distinct populations. The overwhelming majority is Moroccan nationals, returnable under the 1992 bilateral readmission agreement. Rabat took them back quickly—and that tells you something about who controls the tap.

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The second is the residual: sub-Saharan nationals, who are not easily returnable in practice; asylum claimants, and unaccompanied minors or those presenting as such. Spain’s Supreme Court ruling this summer, which restricts summary returns of people intercepted at sea, together with the obligation to transfer unaccompanied minors out of the enclaves, turns that residual into a permanent transfer to the mainland.

My estimate is that there remains a durable residual somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 people still in Ceuta, of whom perhaps half will end up permanently in Spanish territory through asylum procedure or simple administrative attrition.

Signal: Many outside observers believe that such a mass movement would not have been possible without Morocco’s tacit or even explicit assistance. However, Spain’s intelligence agencies claim this was not the case. Social media accounts were putting out information to encourage Moroccans to enter Ceuta illegally, though it is not clear who was behind them. And Morocco and Spain have some contentious issues between them, not just the existence of Ceuta and Melilla in geographical Morocco but also disputes over economics and energy.

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez visited Algeria in July to discuss potential gas deals. Algeria and Morocco have unfriendly relations, cutting off diplomacy a decade ago. Algeria buys Chinese and Russian weapons, while Morocco buys American and Israeli. President Donald Trump likes Morocco’s government, and they, in turn, named a street after him.

What’s really going on? Was Morocco behind this, an innocent bystander, or something in between?

Soto: What was put to the test in Ceuta was not Spanish immigration policy. It was Spain’s sovereignty put into question and disguised in immigration’s clothes.

I think Morocco was indeed behind it. Ceuta was a hybrid attack, and immigrants were the weapon. This is how weaponized migration operates. Morocco maintains border control on the Moroccan side of the Ceuta perimeter, and the European Union pays them for it. A perimeter that has worked for years against continuous pressure does not fail for forty-eight hours by accident and then get back in place at the sound of a whistle.

The EU has for some time suffered these types of attacks: Turkey in 2019, and Belarus and Ceuta in 2021. Morocco’s pressure on Spanish interests goes further back—the Green March in 1975, Perejil in 2002, Ceuta in May 2021 during the Ghali affair, and now 2026. It is very likely this episode will not be the last.

The current Spanish government and the entire EU have no incentive to name the aggressor. There is much at stake in relations with Morocco—counter-terrorism intelligence, narcotics interdiction, trade and energy—not to mention possible leverage over Spanish officials.

What has happened since July 30 is more informative than anything said before it. Within two weeks, Morocco has questioned Spanish sovereignty over Ceuta and Melilla, threatened to suspend the bilateral extradition agreement, demanded the return of the minors, and had its National Human Rights Council accuse the Spanish Civil Guard of mistreatment. Rabat has also made plain its irritation at Spain’s initiative to grant nationality to up to 130,000 people from the disputed territory of Western Sahara.  

Contrast that with Madrid. On 13 August, the interior minister described relations with Morocco as extraordinary, praised Moroccan conduct, and dismissed the extradition threat. Only the Defense Minister broke ranks, saying that what happened on the 30th cannot happen again and that Ceuta and Melilla are emphatically Spanish.

Morocco has long had the capability to unleash migrant waves but used it sparingly because the price—mainly in international public opinion—was high. The current state of bilateral U.S.-Spain relations lowered that price.

Between March and July, there were several articles by Trump administration allies urging Morocco to revive the Green March logic, and a congressional report describing Ceuta and Melilla as located in disputed Moroccan territory.

The State Department said on X that the mass incursion was a “direct result of the Spanish Government’s deliberate efforts to enable and facilitate mass illegal migration into Europe,” surely a reference to Sanchez’s mass amnesty program. Geoeconomics also matters: Ceuta sits on one of the world’s great maritime chokepoints, the Straits of Gibraltar—where both shores are under European control.

Signal: The videos from Ceuta were a rude awakening for Europe and a shock to the many Americans who had never heard of the Spanish enclaves and did not know of this European frontier in Africa. Will the Ceuta crisis of 2026 change anything in Spain? In Europe? Is there a possibility that the Schengen Area will collapse as Spain is seen as its weakest link?

Soto: Spain is the one former European maritime empire whose post-imperial migration has, until very recently, been overwhelmingly a benefit rather than a burden. More than 85 per cent of irregular migration in Spain is not African. It is Central and South American, arriving at Madrid’s and Barcelona’s airports on tourist, work or student visas and becoming irregular by overstaying. These people already speak the language, share the religion, and operate inside a recognizably similar legal and family culture. Integration is largely a formality. Given Spain’s demographic decline, this inflow has been an asset—at least for now.

What has changed is volume, velocity and composition. A flow manageable at one rate is not manageable at four times that rate; the extraordinary regularization of over a million people is itself a function of a system that lost control of the tempo. Layered on top is now a Maghrebi and sub-Saharan irregular inflow that does not speak Spanish and is Muslim. They remain a minority, but present genuine integration difficulties Spain has not previously had to manage. This carries a substantial fiscal cost that no one in Spanish politics has yet been honest about.

The Spanish government’s migration policy is foolish, unfit for the challenges ahead, and civilizationally and fiscally suicidal. But the events in Ceuta were of a different nature. For twenty years, migration in Spain has been argued as a domestic policy question—capacity, integration, labor supply. Ceuta is more basic: a question of territorial sovereignty.

Schengen will not collapse. Nobody needs to repeal it. The mechanism of erosion is the normalization of temporary internal controls under Articles 25 to 27 of the Schengen Borders Code, introduced for a defined period and then renewed indefinitely.

What is genuinely new is what has happened over the last 10 days, which is testament of Europan disunity when facing adversity. Italy, Denmark, and Finland called for Spain’s suspension from Schengen. Italy reintroduced controls on travelers from Spain; Spain retaliated with mirror-image controls. That is the first time Schengen has been used as a weapon between members rather than against a third party. It is a bigger development than the crossing itself.

Spain is not the weak link. It is the exposed link. Spain holds a land border with Africa that no other member state holds, without the NATO Article 5 guarantee covering every other stretch of the Union’s frontier. Spain defends its Moroccan enclaves on behalf of a Union that treats them as a purely internal Spanish administrative problem. Lampedusa and Evros were treated as European frontiers, but Ceuta has been treated as a Spanish one.

What Europe lacks is not border capacity. It is a doctrine of cost and of true deterrence. Belarus, Turkey and Morocco produce condemnation yet no template for future response and no consistent naming of the aggressor.