There is a stretch of coast in northern Morocco, not far from the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, where the Mediterranean Sea looks almost calm in the early morning. At first glance, you might not think that this small body of water is one of the most contested routes in the world. That is, until you see the fences, the patrol boats, and the groups of people walking quietly toward the shore in the dark.
That quiet ended on Thursday, July 30. Something very different came in. Over a thousand people rushed across the border from Morocco into Ceuta, overwhelming the Spanish border guards. The fence at the Tarajal crossing fell down, and Madrid had to call in the military. State TV in Spain said that between 2,000 and 3,000 people crossed in a single day. Nine people died at least. People saw bodies floating in the water.
It was very clear from the way the head of the Civil Guard association in Ceuta described the scene: “The border has completely collapsed.” When someone whose job it is to handle these kinds of situations uses that kind of language, it means more than just the normal periodic surge. Today wasn’t like any other day on a rough frontier.
Along with Melilla, Ceuta is in a unique place in Europe’s geography. These two small Spanish territories are on the very tip of Africa. They share land borders with Morocco and are the only places in the European Union where Africa and Europe touch each other physically. People trying to get to Africa are drawn to them just because of that. Over crossings happen all the time here; there was a big one in 2021 and another one in 2022. But what happened Thursday seemed to surprise even people who have seen similar things before because of how fast and big it was.
Why it happened now, at this volume, is still not clear. The fact that the Moroccan government hasn’t said anything in public raises questions in and of itself. A member of a human rights group in Morocco said that the border with Tajal had been “opened under unusual circumstances.” That phrase gets the job done. It is still very unclear whether this was a deliberate choice by the Moroccan government, a security breach, or something else entirely.
Overnight, things were crazy and sometimes scary on the Moroccan side of the fence, in the border town of Fnideq. After fights between police and crowds, the road was lined with the burned remains of a bus and seven other vehicles. A migrant said he was scared for his life as he was caught in a crowd on a narrow coastal path. Fatima, 23, sat by the road with her two daughters and waited. Her husband had left early in the morning to swim across. “I hoped to cross with my family,” she said. There’s something seriously sad about that sentence.
Spain’s government moved quickly. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez was in charge. It was said that the military would be sent to Ceuta, and Sánchez was planning to go there with the Interior Minister on Friday. In terms of politics, this is touchy ground. By European standards, Spain’s Socialist government has taken a very pro-immigration stance. They recently announced a program to legalize the status of about 500,000 undocumented migrants. When that policy is combined with this kind of public crisis, pressure comes from many directions at once.
Giorgia Meloni, the prime minister of Italy, has already said she might end Schengen travel rules with Spain if Ceuta isn’t fixed. She sees it as a sign of a bigger problem with Spain’s immigration policy. It’s not clear if that threat has any legal or real weight, but it’s clear that politics are getting more heated across Europe.
Another thing that Ceuta shows is that border policy is not an idea. It takes place in real places, along real coastlines, with real people making last-ditch choices in the middle of the night. A 32-year-old man named Brahim came from Tangier and wanted to walk through the gate. It was too late for him. He waited and looked at the water.
