Before dawn on Monday, Spain rushed in military reinforcements to Ceuta after a sudden mass crossing from Morocco left border police struggling to cope in the North African enclave.
The Spanish government said it deployed military units to back up the Guardia Civil after migrants broke through fencing around the city and poured into the territory.
State broadcaster TVE estimated that 2,000 to 3,000 people made it across.
Footage from the scene showed hundreds of migrants in the water, swimming or clinging to inner tubes from the Moroccan side, while others forced their way through a land gate and sprinted into Ceuta.
“It was very tough. The police tried to stop us. But our will and determination allowed us to come here,” said migrant Jadid Zacaria, his hair and shirt still wet from the ocean, speaking in Ceuta as people continued moving through a nearby border gate.
Local authorities said nine bodies had been recovered, bringing to 60 the number of migrants who have died trying to reach Ceuta in recent months.
Madrid said it had sent reinforcements from the mainland: 200 specialised police officers and 60 troops to bolster the enclave’s regular forces.
The scenes echoed the dramatic events of 2021, when roughly 10,000 people from Morocco and sub-Saharan Africa — many of them minors — entered the enclave of 85,000 residents over the course of a few days.
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is due to travel to Ceuta tomorrow alongside Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska for meetings with security forces and local authorities, his office said.
Morocco’s Interior Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Earlier, a Guardia Civil spokesperson said migrants were “massively entering from the sea” near the Tarajal breakwater, a border seawall that can be swum around to reach Ceuta.
The spokesperson said police had been overwhelmed and could not provide an estimate of the number arriving.
Across the city, many shops pulled down their shutters.
Migrants attempting to swim across the border into Ceuta today
Enrique Serrano, who owns a women’s clothing store in central Ceuta, said business owners were organising self-defence because they feared police resources would not be enough.
“I’m not opening this afternoon because the situation is extremely tense… The first thing I have to do is protect my business and my family,” he said. Serrano added that after the fence was breached shortly after midnight, hundreds of migrants surged through within minutes.
Ceuta and Melilla — another Spanish autonomous city on the North African coast — are the European Union’s only land borders with Africa.
Both periodically see spikes in attempted crossings by migrants trying to reach Europe.
Images showed some migrants shouting, “long live Spain” as they entered the territory.
Local government seeks state of emergency
Spain’s Socialist government has a notably pro-migrant stance compared with many European peers and has recently rolled out a programme to grant legal status to about 500,000 undocumented migrants. The initiative has prompted an influx of applications at double that figure.
Right-wing parties attacked the move, arguing it would encourage more arrivals, and quickly blamed Sanchez for what they called crisis conditions in Ceuta.
Conservative opposition People’s Party leader Alberto Nuñez Feijoo wrote on X: “The situation in Ceuta is desperate. The government cannot look the other way… because we are facing a national security crisis.”
Earlier, Ceuta Mayor Juan Jesus Vivas urged the national government to declare an emergency in response to the mass arrivals.
Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said on X that the images from Ceuta showed Sanchez’s migration policy was “misguided.”
A source said Italy was considering bringing back border controls for people traveling from Spain to Italy, travel that normally takes place within the European Union’s passport-free Schengen area.
Earlier this month, Spain’s Supreme Court ruled that migrants intercepted at sea while attempting to reach Ceuta or Melilla cannot be summarily returned under the enclaves’ special “border rejection” regime, which allows authorities to immediately send back people caught crossing the border fences.
Spain’s government argued the surge was driven by the “exploitation by mafias and criminal organizations” of that ruling, not by its plan to regularise some undocumented migrants.
“It has been a slow trickle since the Supreme Court’s ruling, but today has been an explosion,” the Guardia Civil spokesperson said.
The Interior Ministry said it was coordinating closely with Morocco to tackle the increase in irregular arrivals and said it had prevented thousands of migrants from illegally entering Ceuta in recent days.
Migrant rights activist Zakaria Zarroqui said people were still gathering in the nearby Moroccan city of Fnideq to try to cross into Ceuta and that the situation remained out of control.
Mauricio Valiente, director of the Spanish Commission for Refugees, which has lawyers working in Ceuta, said those arriving were of Moroccan and sub-Saharan origin and included families.
