Ceuta is, this Friday, many cities in one, after yesterday, within hours, thousands of Moroccans – the vast majority young, but also families – lined the breakwater of El Tarajal to step onto Spanish territory. The autonomous city looks like a dawn at any music festival, with hundreds of youngsters lying on the grass in parks or on the beach sand, sleeping in swimwear, with no more luggage to protect than some plastic bags. It also looks like a besieged city, with Army vehicles patrolling back and forth, giving a warlike tint to the biggest bilateral migratory crisis between Spain and Morocco since 2021. Another face is that of a city running at half capacity, like on a holiday, with residents in their homes, and its bars and shops closed: yesterday afternoon they decided to pull down the shutters amid the uncertainty generated by the massive entry that could shatter any previous statistics.
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With the Temporary Stay Center for Immigrants (CETI) saturated, hundreds of young people camped in its vicinity throughout the night hoping to occupy one of the half a thousand places it has. The rest, in groups of dozens, wander through the city center, with residents watching in astonishment a scene they do not remember. There are those who gather coins to have breakfast while waiting for some large supermarket to open its doors. There are those heading to the port area with the (little) hope of catching a ferry to the peninsula. There are those crowding into phone shops to buy a mobile card to talk to their relatives. And there are those who are already considering making the reverse journey, crossing the border back due to exhaustion. Yesterday’s euphoria has given way to today’s uncertainty.
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In the overwhelmed autonomous city, which has canceled its fair, there are many minors. There is no need to check any identity document, their faces betray them. They go barefoot, wearing the swimwear with which they entered the sea, with plastic covers in which they keep their phones. They do not speak Spanish, but with few words and (many) gestures they convey their desire not to return to Morocco. In their country, they were told that there were opportunities for them in Spain. And word spread that the border was completely open. The 2021 crisis, among others, left the lesson that minors could not be expelled collectively, that it is necessary to carry out individualized procedures in which the interest of the unaccompanied migrant is examined, so now, one of the great challenges the Government will face is to provide a humanitarian response to minors under 18 who do not show willingness to return to their country.
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The number of people who have entered Ceuta in the last 24 hours is unknown. At this point, no one doubts that irregular entries have exceeded the 10,000 recorded during the standoff that the Alaouite kingdom challenged Spain with in 2021, resolved with the turn of Pedro Sánchez’s Government regarding the position on Western Sahara, aligned with Rabat’s stance. The Ministry of the Interior refuses to give figures on the massive entry into the city, which has 84,000 inhabitants. According to police sources, the number could be around 40,000 migrants. What is confirmed, by police sources, is that security forces have recovered 18 bodies of people who tried to enter Ceuta by swimming. The other big unknown of the crisis is the cause of the avalanche. Several reasons are on the table, although in (almost) all there is agreement on the permissiveness with which Morocco acted yesterday, after days of cooperating to stop migrants trying to cross by swimming.
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