The Ceuta Illusion: Why Europe’s Border Did Not Collapse
by Jaffa Levy
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By dawn, the clothes had begun to gather along the rocks at Tarajal beach. Shoes, shirts and cheap backpacks lay where their owners had abandoned them before entering the water. Beyond the breakwater, young men were swimming towards the Spanish city of Ceuta, their heads rising and disappearing between the waves. Others pressed towards the land frontier as police lines struggled beneath the weight of numbers. Within hours, what looked like a migration emergency had become a geopolitical spectacle.
The first reports spoke of hundreds. Then thousands. Spain ultimately estimated that about 50,000 people had entered Ceuta from Morocco in little more than a day, an influx equivalent to more than half the city’s population.
Spanish soldiers appeared in the streets. Police officers carried exhausted swimmers from the water. Shops closed. Residents watched from balconies as young men wandered through the city in wet clothes, searching for food, shelter and some route onwards. Bodies were recovered from the sea and from the crush around the coastal barriers.
It was not true.
The migrants had entered Spanish sovereign territory. They had not reached mainland Spain, and they had not obtained freedom to travel across Europe. Ceuta is Spain, but it is not the Spanish peninsula. It is a small, fortified city on the North African coast, separated from Andalusia by the Strait of Gibraltar and from Morocco by fences, checkpoints and the sea.
Why Entering Ceuta Does Not Mean Entering Mainland Spain
Ceuta and Melilla are sovereign Spanish cities on the African coast. They are part of Spain and the European Union, but their unusual geography has produced a special border regime.
A person crossing from Morocco into either city has entered Spanish territory. That does not create an automatic right to travel to Madrid, Barcelona, Málaga or any other part of mainland Spain.
There is no road or railway connecting the enclaves to the peninsula. The only practical routes onwards are by ferry or aircraft. Every passenger leaving Ceuta or Melilla for mainland Spain must pass through identity and document controls before boarding. The special provisions attached to Spain’s participation in the Schengen system expressly preserve these checks.
A Spanish citizen may travel using a valid national identity card or passport. An eligible citizen of another European Union country would ordinarily require a recognised passport or national identity document. A Moroccan or other non European traveller would normally need a valid passport and, depending upon nationality and status, a Schengen visa, residence permit or another official document establishing the right to enter mainland Spain.
An irregular migrant who has swum around the breakwater ordinarily possesses none of these documents. Such a person cannot simply walk into the port, buy a ticket and board the next ferry to Algeciras.
Spanish authorities may register the migrant, record fingerprints, seek to establish identity and nationality and determine whether an application for asylum or international protection is being made. The person may be placed in a reception centre, enter an asylum or immigration procedure, be returned where the law permits, or be transferred to mainland Spain by an official government decision.
A transfer is possible. It is not an automatic entitlement. Even an asylum application begins a legal process rather than conferring immediate freedom to travel throughout Spain or Europe.
The migrants had reached Spanish soil. They had not been released into mainland Spain, and they had not gained unrestricted access to the Schengen Area.
What followed demonstrated the point. By the next evening, Spanish authorities said that about 48,300 of those who had crossed had returned to Morocco. Many had apparently expected that reaching Spanish territory would open a route to the peninsula. Instead they found themselves inside an overcrowded enclave, with little food or shelter and no lawful means of boarding a ferry or aircraft.
An army of occupation does not normally return across the frontier in almost the same numbers in which it arrived. This was not an invasion of Europe in the ordinary meaning of the word.
It was nevertheless a severe breach of Spain’s frontier and a profound humiliation for Madrid. The political effect did not depend upon migrants reaching the mainland. It depended upon the spectacle of a government losing control of one of its cities, the deaths in the water and the knowledge that the flow might begin again.
The Frontier Morocco Can Open and Close
Morocco denied engineering the crossing. Spanish officials blamed trafficking networks, economic desperation and rumours circulated through social media. Reports suggested that many young Moroccans had prepared for the attempt, sharing routes, buying flotation devices and even taking swimming lessons.
Those explanations may account for why people wished to leave Morocco. They do not fully explain how tens of thousands were able to converge on one of the most closely watched borders in the Mediterranean.
The movement required transport and time. People arrived by car, bus and motorcycle before descending towards the sea. Moroccan security forces were initially passive at crucial points. When Rabat restored control, the movement stopped.
Spain had seen the mechanism before. In May 2021, more than 8,000 people entered Ceuta after Morocco relaxed enforcement during a diplomatic dispute. Madrid had allowed Brahim Ghali, the leader of the Polisario Front, to receive medical treatment in Spain. Rabat, which claims Western Sahara and regards the Polisario movement as a threat to its territorial integrity, reacted furiously. The European Parliament later condemned Morocco’s use of border control and migration as political pressure.
The lesson was clear. Morocco does not merely guard Europe’s frontier. It possesses the ability to loosen that guard. Border enforcement can therefore become leverage.
Europe has built much of its migration policy around bargains with neighbouring governments. Morocco, Turkey, Tunisia and Libya are expected to stop people before they reach European territory. When they do not, Europe discovers that part of its sovereignty has been subcontracted.
Ceuta is particularly vulnerable. Spain considers it an integral part of the country. Morocco regards it, together with Melilla, as occupied territory left behind by European colonialism. Spain answers that the cities have been Spanish for centuries and that their inhabitants are Spanish citizens with elected governments. Morocco points to Madrid’s demand that Britain surrender Gibraltar and asks why the same anticolonial logic should not apply across the water.
The Warnings Came Before the Crowds
Claims that Israel helped to organise the crossing remain unproven. No public document, intelligence leak, intercepted communication or official investigation has established operational Israeli direction. That boundary must be stated plainly.
Yet the political use of Ceuta and Melilla was not invented after the migrants arrived. For months beforehand, a network of American, Israeli and pro Moroccan commentators had been identifying the enclaves as Spain’s exposed flank and urging pressure against Madrid.
In March, Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon official associated with the American Enterprise Institute and the Middle East Forum, called for a second Moroccan Green March. His proposal was explicit. “Moroccans should gather, send bulldozers to the border, and then enter Ceuta and Melilla unarmed to raise the flag,” he wrote, invoking the civilian mobilisation that preceded Spain’s withdrawal from Western Sahara in 1975.
Rubin was not speaking for the United States government. But he belonged to the Washington policy world and was urging mass civilian pressure on the two cities four months before the crossing.
On March 18, a contributor to The Times of Israel blogs published an article entitled “Israel, Make Sánchez Pay.” It argued that Israel should openly declare that Spanish sovereignty over Ceuta and Melilla was not beyond challenge. “If Madrid insists on politicizing Israel’s borders and legitimacy,” the writer said, Spain should lose the privilege of having its own territorial sensitivities treated as untouchable.
The publication states that blog contributions represent their authors rather than the newspaper. Even so, the argument had entered a prominent Israeli media space before the crisis.
In April, Ynet, one of Israel’s largest news organisations, published an opinion article under the title “Abraham Accords Reach the Strait: How Israel Can Help Morocco Recover Ceuta and Melilla.” The article argued that helping Morocco recover the enclaves would advance American and Israeli interests while punishing a NATO member that had chosen what it called obstruction over partnership.
The author was not an Israeli minister. It was an opinion article, not a government instruction. But its thesis was unmistakable. Spain’s deteriorating relations with Israel and Washington had created an opportunity. Morocco should press its claim, and Israel should help.
What the Evidence Shows
Established: Before the crossing, former American officials and writers in Israeli publications publicly advocated challenging Spanish sovereignty over Ceuta and Melilla.
Established: One former Pentagon official explicitly proposed a mass, unarmed Moroccan civilian march into the cities.
Established: Morocco and Israel had developed close military, intelligence and diplomatic relations following the Abraham Accords.
Strong inference: Ceuta and Melilla had become recognised pressure points in the confrontation between Spain, Morocco and Israel.
Not established: There is no public proof that Israel, the United States or any lobbying organisation planned, funded or directed the July crossing.
The signals also appeared in Washington. American political figures sympathetic to Morocco questioned whether the cities should remain Spanish, while commentators urged Donald Trump and Marco Rubio to recognise them as occupied Moroccan territory.
But governments do not need to issue declarations for political pressure to gather force. By the summer, Spain stood in an increasingly uncomfortable position. Pedro Sánchez had recognised Palestine, condemned Israel’s conduct in Gaza and become one of the Israeli government’s sharpest critics in Europe. Morocco, meanwhile, had become a close Israeli security partner and an important member of the Abraham Accords network.
When tens of thousands of Moroccans suddenly entered Ceuta, suspicion did not arise from nowhere. It rested upon a visible chain of prior advocacy, threats and strategic commentary.
A Small City at the Centre of a Larger Contest
Ceuta occupies only a narrow peninsula, but it sits beside one of the world’s most important maritime passages. The Strait of Gibraltar connects the Atlantic with the Mediterranean and carries commercial shipping, energy supplies and naval traffic between Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
Ceuta adds military, surveillance and diplomatic weight, but it does not give Madrid an unrestricted power to close the Strait. International law preserves transit passage. Its importance lies in its position overlooking the approaches to the Mediterranean and in what its loss would signify.
For Morocco, recovering Ceuta or Melilla would complete a national story begun with independence and continued through Western Sahara. For Spain, losing either city would be a constitutional shock and a humiliation comparable in emotional force to Britain losing Gibraltar.
For Israel and its supporters, the cities offered a means of answering Sánchez without confronting Spain directly. Question the enclaves. Encourage Morocco. Remind Madrid that territorial arguments can be turned against those who use them.
That is why the crossing should be understood neither as a simple migration crisis nor as a proven foreign conspiracy. It was an event in which human desperation, Moroccan state power and a wider geopolitical campaign converged.
Europe’s Outsourced Border
The migrants themselves were the least powerful actors. Most were young Moroccans who saw the lights of Ceuta and imagined that another life lay close enough to swim towards.
They discovered that Ceuta was Spanish soil without being a doorway to mainland Spain. The ferry terminals and airport were controlled. The city could register and contain them, but it could not absorb them.
Within two days, nearly all had returned to Morocco.
By then the message had been delivered. Spain had been shown how quickly a city could be overwhelmed. Europe had been reminded that its southern border depended upon governments beyond it. Morocco had demonstrated that migration control was a diplomatic asset that could be withheld.
At Tarajal beach, the sea eventually emptied. Moroccan forces returned to the approaches. Spanish police regained control of the promenade. The abandoned clothes remained on the rocks for a little longer, drying beneath the sun.
The crowds had gone almost as quickly as they arrived.
