Leader of Spain’s Ceuta enclave warns of emergency as 1,500 migrants arrive in one week

MADRID – Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta is experiencing a humanitarian and security emergency after 1,500 migrants reached the city by swimming across from Morocco over the past week, the territory’s leader said on July 30.

Ceuta, together with Melilla – another Spanish autonomous city located in North Africa – represents the European Union’s only land border with Africa. Both cities periodically experience surges in attempted crossings by migrants seeking to reach Europe.

Speaking in separate interviews with radio stations Cadena SER and Onda Cero, Juan Jesus Vivas said the recent influx had overwhelmed the city’s reception system and left hundreds of migrants sleeping outside.

“We are facing a situation of absolute humanitarian and social emergency,” Vivas told Cadena SER, adding that facilities for unaccompanied minors were operating at 2,400 per cent of capacity.

In comments to Onda Cero, he described the situation as a national emergency and called for a “decisive, forceful, immediate and coordinated” response under a single command structure.

Spain’s interior ministry said in a statement that several ministries were “acting in coordination to respond with the utmost speed and efficiency to the situation in Ceuta”.

It said the government had increased its resources “to guarantee security and control of migration as well as the necessary humanitarian aid, so that no lives are put in danger at sea”.

Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska will travel to the enclave on July 30 to meet the local authorities and security chiefs, as the Spanish government said it was coordinating across multiple ministries to strengthen border control and provide humanitarian assistance.

Arrivals were currently averaging about 300 people a day, according to Vivas. At that pace, he warned, Ceuta could face a situation comparable to the May 2021 migration crisis, when 10,000 people entered the enclave in mere days.

Officials could not immediately be reached on July 30 to give more recent figures.

Vivas also pointed to the human cost of the crossings, saying 60 bodies had been recovered at sea in recent months, and argued that stronger migration controls would help prevent further deaths.

The interior ministry said Moroccan security forces were helping to curb arrivals from its territory.

It said the Moroccan government was working “faithfully and permanently with Spain and collaborating closely to deal with the situation”.

Vivas called for changes to Spain’s immigration framework, saying legal shortcomings exposed by a recent Supreme Court ruling needed to be addressed.

Earlier in July, the 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. REUTERS, AFP