Police fired shots at crowds of migrants in the Spanish exclave of Ceuta on Friday in an attempt to move them from beaches to a new camp a kilometre away.
Six weeks after an estimated 80,000 people illegally entered Ceuta from Morocco, drawing international headlines and reproach from neighbouring countries about lax border controls, between 5,000 and 10,000 remain, putting additional strain on the city of only 83,000 people.
After a series of legal and political disputes, authorities were given permission by the National Court on Thursday to open a temporary camp in an industrial area of the Port of Ceuta, which can hold up to 1,500 adults.
About 150 officers took part in an operation on Friday to move them to the camps, sparking a crush. Police fired shots, injuring several people, El Pais reported.
The arrival of thousands of migrants over the summer caused a political headache for Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who has been accused of compromising the security of Europe by creating a backdoor to the continent.
Ceuta is one of only two European cities on the African continent – Melilla, 225km away, being the other – while Morocco is a key partner for Spain on economic, counterterrorism and migration issues.
Italy and Spain this week extended the suspension of the European Union's border-free Schengen arrangement with each other for another 15 days. Italy said the decision was made because “significant risks to internal security persist, alongside a potential threat linked to possible terrorist infiltration”, the Interior Ministry said.
Mr Sanchez has insisted his government received no warning of the vast numbers who would arrive over the course of one weekend.
“No one could have anticipated the migration crisis that occurred on the 30 and 31 [of July]. No competent agency did. Not in Spain, nor in the EU,” Sanchez said in a post on X after declassifying a series of documents about the crisis.
Among the 40 documents and conversations released were alerts from July 29 about “a call to storm the [border] fence and come by sea”. They were circulated on Facebook and in WhatsApp groups with more than 180,000 members.
The communications from the intelligence services were passed to a low-ranking government official in Ceuta without anyone taking action. Those who were informed did not believe the threat would result in migrants arriving in such large numbers. And the warnings were not sent on to senior officials.
As a result, the release has triggered even greater scrutiny of Mr Sanchez’s actions and more questions about his accountability and competence.
For Spain's Prime Minister, the risk is that he miscalculated the degree of anger over the incident, including the ethics of going on a month-long holiday in the immediate aftermath and appearing to deflect blame onto Morocco. He also accused other EU nations of being “selfish” for not coming to Spain’s aid.
Opposition leader Alberto Nunez Feijoo of the right-wing People’s Party said the Spanish government was “incapable of grasping the true diagnosis and applying the correct treatment”.
“When a European border is violated, all of Europe is weakened,” he said. “When a border is not adequately defended, all of Europe is left unprotected. This is what is happening.”
He called for Europe as a whole to “acknowledge the failure of the Spanish government and exert the necessary pressure to prevent this crisis from becoming entrenched, spreading and recurring”.
