While Pedro Sánchez, his government and much of the mainstream media still try to pretend that the migration crisis in Ceuta is under control, the Spanish enclave in North Africa, invaded by 60,000–80,000 illegal migrants from Morocco last week, is turning into the lawless Wild West.
In no more than five days since the first arrivals reached the shores of Ceuta, public order in the city of 84,000 has basically collapsed. Despite the government, in cooperation with the Moroccan authorities, returning many of the migrants who broke into Ceuta, 3,000–5,000 remained, causing serious disruption and unrest.
The clearest evidence of that breakdown came from American journalist Nick Shirley, who was attacked and ran for his life while filming among the migrants still roaming Ceuta. Video shows several men surrounding Shirley and his cameraman before the confrontation turns into a chase, with rocks and other objects hurled at them as they flee.
‘He has a knife,’ Shirley shouts as one of the migrants runs behind the crew with a blade in his hand. The journalists eventually reach a Spanish police vehicle and are escorted away, but the images leave little room for the official fiction that normality has returned.
The 28-minute report also showed migrants hiding in the surrounding hills, an overcrowded camp, residents describing their fear of looting, and migrants thanking Sánchez while claiming that the Moroccan authorities had let them cross and Spain had ‘opened its gates’. By Monday night, just a few hours after it was published, the full video had surpassed four million views on X.
Hours later, separate footage published by VoxPopuli showed another migrant openly carrying a handgun. The weapon was not fired in the clip, but the sight of an armed illegal migrant walking through Ceuta captured the scale of lawlessness residents had to endure.
The same disorder has spread into residential districts. In Nazaret, families have organized night watches after repeated attempts to enter their homes, while residents of La Colina reported migrants climbing onto walls and trying to break into at least three properties. Nearby, hundreds camped around the overcrowded reception centre fought one another with stones as frightened locals watched the settlements expand into the surrounding hills.
At the Trampolín beach camp, journalists witnessed fights erupt over food after migrants had allegedly gone days without eating. Spanish television also carried residents’ accounts of occupied homes, thefts, a burned car and a robbed bakery, with locals claiming that overstretched police could no longer keep the migrants out of their neighbourhoods.
The crisis has meanwhile become an open European dispute. A senior Moroccan official said Spain had destroyed deterrence when its Supreme Court limited immediate returns for sea arrivals, arguing that Europe demanded Morocco stop departures while Spain ‘rolled out the red carpet’ once migrants crossed.
Twenty-two EU governments have also warned that Sánchez’s mass regularization scheme can act as a pull factor, while Italy and Denmark led demands for tougher action and emergency talks among EU interior ministers. Sánchez denounced the criticism, but even the European Commission has responded by calling for a harder border and returns policy.
In a letter to the Spanish prime minister, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen urged the EU to reinforce its external borders, introduce better early-warning systems, dismantle smuggling networks and accelerate the return of migrants with no right to remain. The Commission also proposed greater technical and financial support for Morocco, despite suspicions that Rabat permitted or facilitated the mass crossing in the first place.
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