Residents of Ceuta, a Spanish enclave on the North African coast bordering Morocco, destroyed a makeshift migrant camp on a city beach on Thursday night (27). According to G1, which published Reuters footage, the demonstrators tore down tents, threw migrants' belongings into the sea and burned objects in a bonfire while waving Spanish and Ceuta flags. Police formed a cordon to keep the group from advancing on the migrants, who watched the destruction from a nearby area.
Before heading to the beach, the demonstrators blocked a nearby road and chanted slogans against the presence of foreigners, including "expel the invaders", according to Reuters. The action comes nearly a month after the mass crossing of July 30, when about 72,000 people crossed the border between Morocco and the enclave, many of them swimming across the Mediterranean. Spanish authorities counted 82 deaths on the Spanish side, and Morocco confirmed 14 more. In the following days, thousands of migrants returned to Morocco under police escort, and around 5,000 remain in the territory. On August 15, Moroccan police arrested at least 111 people trying to reach Ceuta after new calls for a mass crossing circulated on social media.
The episode lays bare the pressure on the European Union's migration policy at its southernmost border. Madrid is betting on cooperation with origin and transit countries, while Rabat denies the suspicion, raised by Spain's National Intelligence Center (CNI), that Moroccan authorities were complicit in the July mobilization. For Brazil, the case has direct relevance: Brazilians form one of the largest immigrant communities in Spain, and Brazil's Foreign Ministry advocates at United Nations forums the same formula of "legal, safe and orderly" migration now invoked by the Spanish government.
Spanish government's response
After the July crossing, Spain's government reinforced security in the enclave with more than 500 police officers sent from the mainland. Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska also announced a package of measures for Ceuta and Melilla, the other Spanish enclave in Morocco, according to SBT News. They include extending the Tarajal and Benzú breakwaters, installing a permanent maritime containment system with anchored buoys, and building a new temporary reception center for foreigners with capacity for 800 people.
"Spain will continue to defend a European policy based on the external dimension, on cooperation with partner countries, on fighting the mafias and on the integral management of migratory flows. A goal that the events in Ceuta only reinforce," Grande-Marlaska said.
The destruction of the camp by civilians, with police in a containment posture, is the most visible episode of escalating tensions in the enclave since July. Ceuta and Melilla are the European Union's only land borders with Africa, which has turned them for years into a point of migratory pressure and diplomatic dispute between Spain and Morocco.