The Spanish government has 30 days to resolve the migrant crisis in Ceuta or face the courts, the city's mayor-president has warned, after new attempts to reach the exclave were thwarted at the weekend.
Juan Jesus Viva escalated his rhetoric on Monday after hundreds of migrants still in Ceuta staged a protest on the beach urging Spanish authorities to grant them asylum instead of sending them back to Morocco.
An estimated 5,000 to 8,000 migrants are still in the North African exclave after a mass border crossing two weeks ago. Hundreds of these migrants staged a protest on a popular urban beach on Sunday, urging Spanish authorities to grant them asylum instead of sending them back to Morocco.
The protesters held up Spanish flags and banners reading “We don't want to go back to Morocco” and “We are also human”, while chanting slogans such as “We're tired” and “We need a solution”.
Mr Viva accused the government of “almost total inaction” over the crisis and said he would take the issue to Spanish courts. “My intention is to explain the situation to the president of the Supreme Tribunal and the president of the Constitutional Court, if they will accept me. Judicial powers are the cornerstone of the state. Ceuta is living in exceptional times,” he said at an extraordinary meeting of the governing council.
During the mass border crossing two weeks ago, more than 72,000 people entered the territory, which has a population of about 80,000. The vast majority returned either through deportation or voluntarily in the following days.
The crisis triggered a diplomatic stand-off with Italy and other European countries, with Rome introducing additional passport checks for Spanish citizens, putting strain on the border-free movement normally afforded to EU citizens. Spain introduced reciprocal checks in retaliation.
The Italian government said on Monday that it was waiting for its intelligence agency's report on the crisis before lifting the ban. There had been suggestions last week that it could be lifted if a second incursion planned for August 15 failed to materialise.
Forewarned
Border workers say they warned Spain's central government that more people, spurred on by social media, were arriving by sea, adding they feared an escalation. But the government did not heed their warnings and took little action, they said.
A Spanish court ruling published on June 29 stated that migrants could only be immediately pushed back from entering Ceuta if they crossed a physical barrier, specifying that this would not apply to anyone swimming to the exclave. News of this ruling and videos of migrants successfully entering Ceuta encouraged more and more to try their luck.
Spain's government initially blamed the rush of July 29-30 on misinformation about the ruling spread by criminal networks. Spanish authorities say 80 people died in the rush and Moroccan authorities said 14 bodies were recovered in their territory, putting the number of confirmed deaths at 94. Human rights groups say more remain missing, and that the death toll could be higher.
Social media
Concerns persist over online disinformation campaigns. False posts were shared on WhatsApp and Facebook promoting the claim that Spain would open its border on August 15, a national holiday marking the Catholic festival of the Assumption of Mary.
The calls spread, with hundreds of sub-Saharan African migrants gathered in the border town of Fnideq. But they were pushed back using tear gas by Moroccan security forces, who had been deployed in the border area since July. State media reported that 111 were arrested.
The EU has contacted social media giants regarding Ceuta, according to Henna Virkkunen, executive VP for tech sovereignty, security and democracy of the European Commission.
“We met again with Meta and TikTok to advance our co-operation on the Ceuta situation. Both platforms have ramped up enforcement against human smuggling and disinformation,” Ms Virkkunen wrote on X on Saturday.
Meta, which owns Facebook and WhatsApp, and ByteDance, which owns TikTok, have “activated crisis protocols” to vet posts about Ceuta, he said.
