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New information from several military and civilian intelligence sources suggests that the Spanish government had advance warning of the risk of a mass arrival of migrants in the North African exclave of Ceuta this week.
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Intelligence alerts were issued over several days, including in the hours immediately before tens of thousands of people crossed from Morocco, sources said.
Intelligence services had warned that King Mohammed VI was likely to make a “gesture of magnanimity” at the border to coincide with Morocco’s Throne Day celebrations. Those initial warnings were followed by reports of migrants swimming across from Fnideq, known as Castillejos in Spanish, and buses carrying people from different parts of Morocco towards the border.
Over the course of around ten days, nearly 1,000 people swam into Ceuta. Intelligence officials reportedly viewed this as a test by Moroccan authorities and passed that assessment on to the government.
In the end, between 60,000 and 75,000 migrants crossed into Ceuta, marking the largest migration crisis in the autonomous city’s history. According to Spain’s Interior Ministry, about 53,000 people had returned to Morocco in the days that followed.
Border forces overwhelmed
The Civil Guard and National Police stationed at the Tarajal border crossing were unable to stop the influx of migrants and instead focused on assisting the injured, several sources said.
The same sources, speaking to The Objective, criticized Madrid for not deploying the army immediately, despite military units in both Ceuta and Melilla being on standby.
“They could have been mobilized without prior meetings, simply following a political decision and an order from the operations command,” they said.
Officers deployed in the area also reported that the Moroccan gendarmerie stood “with their arms folded” while migrants attempted the crossing, both along the breakwater and on the access road to the border crossing, where other people climbed over fences and roofs.
Civil Guard sources added that the current situation differs from that seen in May 2021, when Morocco relaxed its border controls in a diplomatic response to Spain’s decision to admit the Polisario Front leader, Brahim Ghali.
This time, they say, the number of people swimming into Ceuta had already been rising for weeks, partly because of a Spanish Supreme Court ruling prohibiting the immediate return of migrants who reach Spanish territory by swimming.
The government’s response
The Interior Ministry insisted hours later that cooperation with Morocco was “exemplary, loyal and permanent.”
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez described the mass entry as a “violation of Spain’s territorial integrity” and blamed the incident on people-smuggling networks, arguing that they had exploited the Supreme Court ruling by encouraging thousands of people to attempt the crossing.
Sánchez also insisted that Moroccan authorities had cooperated “swiftly and consistently” from the outset, adding that Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska had reinforced border security as arrivals by sea increased.
That reinforcement ultimately resulted in about thirty additional officers and a boat that, a few days later, broke down.
Despite repeated warnings from intelligence agencies, the Ministry of the Interior did not order the deployment of reinforcements until late Thursday, when the army was called in along with additional personnel from the Civil Guard and the National Police.