More than 60,000 migrants crossed into Ceuta, a small Spanish enclave on Morocco’s Mediterranean coast, over two days, leaving 67 people dead and prompting the city’s Spanish residents to barricade themselves in their homes as the local population nearly doubled.
The mass crossing triggered an emergency diplomatic response across Europe. Italy temporarily suspended the Schengen border-free travel arrangement with Spain, a move backed by Finland and Denmark. Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis urged a temporary suspension of Spain’s Schengen membership altogether. EU interior ministers were scheduled to discuss the crisis by video conference on Tuesday, following an open letter signed by 22 of the bloc’s 27 member states citing “serious concerns.”
Among the last migrants to reach the shore was Sid Ahmed Dib, 23, from the Algerian port city of Skikda. He staggered from the sea and collapsed on the sand at Ceuta’s Playa El Tarajal beach, having swum for at least four hours to get there. A Spanish soldier gave him a bottle of water and he wept before composing himself.
“Algeria is so bad, worse than Morocco,” Dib said. “I tried to get into Tunisia, then went to Casablanca and then came here when I heard thousands were coming. I want to get to Europe. Madrid or Paris maybe.” He produced a blue plastic bag from his shorts containing his Algerian passport, which he had kept dry throughout the crossing.
Many of the 67 who died either drowned or were crushed trying to climb the breakwater stones at the border fence. By the time Dib arrived, most of the thousands who had crossed before him were already returning to Morocco. One woman who came with her 16-year-old son said they were heading back because they were “tired and hungry and there is no shelter” and had “slept on the streets like dogs.” She said: “Without doubt, the Moroccan government let this happen for whatever reason. Probably because it wants to get back at Spain for something.”
Ceuta’s Spanish residents were in a state of open fear. Belen Picazo, a 26-year-old graphic designer who lives in Madrid, had returned to Ceuta after the first influx because she was worried sick about her mother, a nurse, and her engineer father, who live in the city centre.
“I was genuinely frightened for my parents,” she said. “I am sorry for the immigrants who died trying to get here but we are all worried about what will happen next. There is fear everywhere. Who can blame us? This is not a normal situation. Even with soldiers everywhere people are scared. This cannot be allowed to carry on. Like everyone else, we are buying water, oil, everything in bulk, just in case.”
Residents stripped supermarket shelves in a wave of panic-buying. The Mercadona supermarket, which had shut its doors for two days during the crisis, had three armoured personnel carriers parked outside to prevent migrants from entering, and queues at each till stretched 50-deep. A police officer surveying the empty streets put it plainly: “Look around you. It may as well be Morocco because all the Spaniards are indoors.”
Political Fallout
A Spanish supreme court ruling that made it harder to intercept migrants at sea was cited as one trigger for the crisis, meaning those who reached land were more likely to be processed there than immediately returned. Social media messages declaring the border “open” spread rapidly across Morocco, though the origin of those messages remained unclear. There were also reports that buses had been laid on to transport people to the border, and according to several people spoken to in Ceuta, Moroccan police had urged them to “go to Spain.”
Suspicion fell on Morocco’s government, which has long resented Spain’s presence in Ceuta and its sister enclave of Melilla, 140 miles to the west. Alberto Nunez Feijoo, head of Spain’s opposition conservative People’s Party, visited the city and described the influx as a “premeditated and unprecedented occupation of Spanish territory.”
Spanish Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called for an urgent meeting, saying: “The security of our external borders is a shared responsibility of all member states.” Critics pointed to Sanchez’s amnesty scheme, which offered more than a million migrants illegally living in Spain the chance to apply for residency status. Launched in April and later halted, the scheme drew fire from opponents who said it helped entice the Moroccan migrants. Sanchez had insisted it would make Spain “a happy place to live for everyone, whatever their ethnicity.”
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni called the scenes “shocking.” The EU said it supported the return of migrants and spoke of helping Spain restore effective control of its border, though many in Ceuta remained unconvinced. One soldier, surveying the aftermath, said: “This has been a crazy few days, nothing like it. But remember, it has happened before and will happen again.”
