In an unprecedented sudden influx of migrants that has triggered a new international crisis, roughly 40,000 people have crossed from Morocco into Spain’s North African exclave of Ceuta over recent days, with thousands making the risky journey overnight alone. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez traveled to the border territory on Friday to coordinate the government’s response to what is already one of the most severe border migration crises the country has faced in modern history.
Ceuta, a tiny 18.5-square-kilometer Spanish territory, and its neighboring exclave Melilla are the only two European territories that share a land border with the African continent. The vast majority of recent arrivals have bypassed the short border barrier by swimming across the adjacent Mediterranean Sea, a dangerous crossing that has already claimed 18 lives, according to a senior Spanish police source who spoke on condition of anonymity. The source confirmed that arrivals continued at a steady pace through the night and were still ongoing early Friday morning.
AFP correspondents on the ground witnessed men, women and children discarding the makeshift flotation devices and clothing they used for the crossing after emerging onto Ceuta’s shores. As of Friday, hundreds of migrants, most of them young men, remained gathered near the Tarajal border crossing and in residential areas of the enclave, while some had already chosen to return to Morocco, citing overwhelming overcrowding in the territory. Spanish police and civil guard officers have largely refrained from blocking arrivals, instead directing new migrants toward the local reception center.
The root cause of the sudden surge in migration remains unclear as of Friday, though the incident echoes a similar 2021 crisis when more than 10,000 migrants crossed into Ceuta over two days after Morocco loosened border controls during a diplomatic dispute with Spain. That 2021 rift erupted after Madrid allowed the leader of the Polisario Front, the Sahrawi independence movement fighting Morocco over control of Western Sahara, to receive medical treatment on Spanish soil. The dispute was resolved in 2022 when Spain abandoned its decades-long policy of neutrality on the Western Sahara issue and backed Morocco’s autonomy plan for the region, a move that in turn triggered a major diplomatic rift between Madrid and Algeria, Polisario’s primary backer. Relations between Spain and Algeria have only recently begun to thaw, with Sanchez making the first visit by a Spanish prime minister to the North African country in four years last July.
Morocco has not yet released an official public statement on the 2024 surge, but an anonymous Moroccan government source confirmed to AFP that senior officials from the two countries have already held discussions about the crisis.
The sudden influx has already caused significant diplomatic fallout across Europe and beyond. Italy triggered a formal rebuke from Spain Thursday after calling for Madrid to be suspended from the Schengen Area, Europe’s passport-free open border zone. Spanish officials accused Rome of exploiting the humanitarian crisis for domestic political gain, and summoned the Italian ambassador to Madrid to protest the statement. Finland publicly backed Italy’s call on Friday, while French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez announced Thursday night that he had ordered immediate tightening of border checks between France and Spain in response to the crisis. Even in the United States, two senior advisors to former President Donald Trump seized on footage of the Ceuta arrivals to reiterate their hardline anti-immigration policy positions.
In response to the crisis, the Spanish government has deployed additional military personnel, police officers, specialized divers, surveillance drones and patrol boats to Ceuta to reinforce border security and manage the influx of arrivals. Many new arrivals have expressed optimism about their decision to leave Morocco, with crowds of migrants walking through Ceuta’s streets Thursday shouting “Bye bye Morocco, hello Spain” and thanking Spanish police for their willingness to allow entry.