Sixty Thousand People Crossed Into Ceuta: Europe's Only Land Border With Africa

The fence in the photograph above does not stop at the beach. It carries on into the water along a breakwater, because the land border between Morocco and the Spanish city of Ceuta runs out into the Mediterranean and somebody has to decide where it ends.

On 30 and 31 July, people went round the end of it. They swam, waded and floated round the breakwaters at Tarajal and Benzu, or walked the shoreline at low water, some on inner tubes, many with their phones sealed in plastic bags. Spanish officials put the number who got into Ceuta at around sixty thousand over roughly two days. The city has a population of about eighty-five thousand.

At least seventy-two people died, most of them in the water, some crushed in a press of bodies at a breakwater. Another eleven died at Melilla, the other Spanish city on that coast, about four hundred kilometres away. Those are the figures reported as of 2 August and they have been revised upward more than once, so treat them as provisional.

By the evening of 31 July, Spanish officials said roughly fifty thousand people had gone back to Morocco of their own accord, most after hours in a city with no accommodation or resources for them.

Why there is a European border on the African coast

Ceuta and Melilla are Spanish cities on the North African mainland, and between them they form the only land frontier between the European Union and Africa. If you are standing in Morocco and you get over that fence, you are in the EU without having crossed water in a boat.

Their history predates the modern states involved. Ceuta was taken by Portugal in 1415 and came under Spanish rule later; Melilla was taken by Castile in 1497. Both were Spanish long before Morocco existed in its present form and long before Spain's protectorate over Morocco, which ended with independence in 1956. Morocco has claimed both ever since and describes them as occupied. Spain rejects the claim, points to several centuries of continuous administration, and notes that both are ordinary Spanish cities with elected governments and EU citizens living in them.

That disagreement sits underneath everything else that happens there.

It has happened before

This is the fourth serious incident on that frontier in a quarter century, and the pattern is familiar enough that both governments have their lines ready.

In July 2002 Moroccan gendarmes landed on Perejil, an uninhabited islet a few hundred metres offshore, and Spanish forces removed them within days. It was a standoff over a rock with goats on it, and it was genuinely about sovereignty.

In May 2021 around eight thousand people crossed into Ceuta over two days, in the middle of a diplomatic row over Spain allowing the leader of the Polisario Front to be treated in a Spanish hospital. Moroccan border control was widely reported to have stepped back. Morocco denied doing so deliberately.

In June 2022 at least twenty-three people died at the Melilla fence during a mass attempt to cross. Rights organisations have alleged a higher toll and criticised the response on both sides of the fence. The circumstances are still disputed.

What Spain has said and done

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called the crossing "an attack" and "a violation of Spain's territorial integrity", and said the state would use every available means to restore control of the border.

The government deployed the Army in support roles, alongside the Civil Guard and the National Police, and the Interior Minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, travelled to Ceuta. It declined a request from the city's mayor-president, Juan Jesus Vivas, to declare a national emergency. Vivas said facilities for unaccompanied minors were running at 2,400 percent of their ordinary capacity.

Spain has announced new physical barriers at the breakwaters, reported as a containment structure several hundred metres long running out into the sea, which is a direct response to how people actually got in.

What Morocco has said

Morocco's ambassador expressed regret at the deaths and said the country supports legal and orderly migration. The government attributed the crossing to smuggling networks and to rumours circulating that border controls had been relaxed, and denied that it had encouraged or permitted the movement.

Whether that is the whole account is exactly what is being argued about, and it is not something that can be settled from outside. Spanish opposition figures and several analysts have pointed to the timing. The Moroccan government rejects the inference. Both of those things are true statements about the argument; neither is a finding.

The three things people are pointing at

Three developments are being offered as explanations, and all three should be read as claims rather than causes.

On 29 June, Spain's Supreme Court barred summary returns, the practice of handing back people who cross without individual processing, for migrants arriving by sea. Critics say the ruling created a window that smuggling networks advertised. Supporters say a country cannot return people without assessing their claims and that the ruling restated existing obligations.

In April, Sanchez announced a large regularisation programme under which about 1.2 million people applied. His opponents, and subsequently a number of EU governments, have called it a pull factor. His government denies that the two are connected.

On 20 July, Sanchez visited Algeria, resuming relations that had been frozen for four years. Some analysts read Morocco's response to the crossings in that light. That is an interpretation of motive, offered by commentators rather than established by evidence.

Europe's reaction, and Spain's reaction to it

The response from other EU capitals was fast and unfriendly. Italy suspended passport-free Schengen travel with Spain. France's interior minister, Laurent Nunez, ordered additional checks on the shared border. Twenty-two member states called for coordinated action at the external frontier.

Sanchez called that reaction "selfish, polarising and unlawful", and the argument now running is a familiar one about whether a border on the edge of the union is a national problem or a shared one. Ceuta is a peculiar place to have that argument, because the frontier being defended is Spanish territory on another continent, and the people arriving at it are almost never trying to stay in Ceuta.

The people it happened to

Most of those who crossed were young Moroccan men. There were also Algerians, unaccompanied minors, and families from further south. Almost all of them went back within about forty-eight hours, having crossed a stretch of sea in the dark for a stay measured in hours.

A smaller group of people from sub-Saharan countries refused to leave and set up camp on the beach in Ceuta, intending to lodge asylum claims. Their cases will take months and most will not succeed.

What happened at the end of July was not a movement of population. It was a rumour, a stretch of water a few hundred metres wide, and a very large number of people willing to bet on both. Seventy-two of them lost, and the fence in the photograph is being extended further out to sea so that the next attempt has to be a longer swim.

Sources

• Wikipedia, "2026 Morocco-Spain border incident" (the 30 and 31 July crossings, the figure of around 60,000, the Tarajal and Benzu breakwater routes, the death toll and its breakdown, the roughly 48,000 to 50,000 voluntary returns, the Spanish deployments and the rejected emergency request, Vivas on 2,400 percent capacity, and Morocco's official response).
• NPR, "Death toll in Spain border crisis reaches 67 as tens of thousands cross back in to Morocco" (the toll as of 1 August and the scale of the returns).
• Euronews, "Situation in Ceuta 'almost entirely reversed' as death toll climbs to 67, Spain says" (the Spanish government's account of the reversal).
• CNN, "Spanish leader slams 'selfish' EU response as death toll from Ceuta crossings climbs" (Sanchez on the reaction of other member states, the Italian suspension of Schengen travel and the French checks ordered by Laurent Nunez).
• Wikipedia, "2021 Morocco-Spain border incident" (the roughly 8,000 crossings in May 2021 and the Polisario dispute behind them).
• Wikipedia, "2022 Melilla incident" (at least 23 deaths, the contested higher figures, and the disputed circumstances).
• Wikipedia, "Perejil Island crisis" (the July 2002 occupation of the islet and its resolution).
• Wikipedia, "Ceuta" (the city's population, its status as a Spanish autonomous city, its history from 1415, and Morocco's claim).