Madrid deploys army as thousands of Moroccans swim to Spanish enclave

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Spain has been gripped by a new migrant crisis after thousands of Moroccans swam to one of its North African enclaves, overwhelming local police and prompting the deployment of the Spanish army.

Droves of mostly young men, some in T-shirts and others in wetsuits, came ashore on a beach in Ceuta on Thursday and ran towards the city, turning a trickle of arrivals in recent days into a surge.

The migration flare-up comes at a delicate moment for Spain’s embattled Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, with analysts suggesting Moroccan authorities may have deliberately enabled the influx.

The tiny Spanish coastal enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla have the EU’s only land frontiers with the African continent. Home to a total of 170,000 people, they are hemmed in by Morocco and surrounded by border fences several metres high.

The enclaves are longstanding sources of tension with the kingdom and the threat of Moroccan migrants swamping them — by land or sea — is seen by analysts as a key source of leverage for Rabat over Madrid.

Ceuta had already recorded about 1,800 unauthorised arrivals over the previous week by Thursday morning. But the numbers then began to surge, according to one official in the Ceuta city government, who estimated that at the peak about 200 people were arriving every minute.

After pleas for help from Ceuta’s government and members of its parliament, the Spanish government announced at the end of the day that “the armed forces will reinforce Civil Guard” law enforcers in Ceuta.

“This morning the border broke,” said the Ceuta official. “We don’t have numbers. The situation is extremely serious.”

Spanish media showed images of a beach strewn with inflatables and flippers left behind by people who then ran by road towards central Ceuta, some yelling exuberantly and gesturing to cameras. Women, children and non-Moroccans were among the arrivals. Some of those attempting to reach Ceuta died at sea.

Alberto Núñez Feijóo, head of Spain’s opposition People’s Party, said: “We are facing a serious national security problem. This is an unprecedented influx.”

In addition to the army, Spain’s interior ministry said it would dispatch a further 60 Civil Guard officers to supplement the 60 already assigned to border surveillance in Ceuta, as well as eight divers and a support vessel.

Riccardo Fabiani, north Africa director of the International Crisis Group, said there were two competing explanations for the events.

One was “possible [Moroccan] retaliation due to improving Spain-Algeria relations”, spurred by a visit by Sánchez to Algiers 10 days ago during which the two countries announced a “new phase” in their relationship.

The other, Fabiani said, was that people had been encouraged to cross via sea by a ruling from Spain’s Supreme Court this month, which stops the Spanish authorities from intercepting and sending back migrants who arrive in Ceuta and Melilla by sea.

The Spanish interior ministry said the “government of Morocco is co-operating with Spain in a consistent and good-faith manner”.

Juan Jesús Vivas, the head of Ceuta’s city government, said earlier this week that migrant reception centres were already saturated with hundreds of people sleeping on the streets.

The situation had echoes of a 2021 crisis when some 6,000 migrants poured into Ceuta in a single day, the largest one-day inflow in Spanish history.

The 2021 influx occurred after Morocco scaled down policing of the frontier after a diplomatic rift over Western Sahara, a territory claimed by Rabat. The following year Spain endorsed a Moroccan plan to give Western Sahara more autonomy but keep it under Rabat’s grip.

Algeria, Morocco’s neighbour and arch-rival, backs independence for the territory.

Haizam Amirah Fernández, director of the Centre for Contemporary Arab Studies in Madrid, said the movement of such a large number of people from Morocco into Ceuta could not have happened “without the Moroccan authorities either knowing beforehand or allowing such a phenomenon to take place”.

He added: “Is this the way that Moroccan authorities try to convey a message of dissatisfaction to Spanish counterparts?”