1) 5000 remaining migrants (the government official numbers) is by far much less than reality that is for sure close to the double
2) Things are now exactly were Morocco would like them to be: Ceuta converted in the Spanish Lampedusa where no body wants to leave. All current Spanish inhabitants will progressively leave in the long term. No economic activities, nor investments, nor jobs will develop. Only a vulnerable flanc for Spain with progressively less interest to be defended. And this is the way for Morocco to get the city in the long term without having to engage in a conventional war.
3) The assumption that Morocco Secret Services was not behind this is naive. They were, even the development of the facts overcome their expectations and in a certain way, they loosed control
4) Finally the proof Morocco is satisfied with the current collapse of Ceuta they have provoked: if it was not intentional, they were already collaborating with Spanish administration with mixed teams of police (and other authorities) moved to Ceuta to help managing the return of the about 10000 remaining migrants in few weeks. A mixed team of Spanish-Morocco police would enormously facilitate and speed up the identification and returning process. They will not do this. They want the problem to become chronic.
Here are some additional ideas that I think are also relevant:
1) Morocco's claim to these territories is even weaker than Tomas pointed out. Of those 700 years under muslim rule, for hundreds of years, these territories were under the control of the muslim kingdoms rooted in the Iberian Peninsula, not in Morocco itself.
2) Even though close to 50% of the inhabitants of Ceuta and Melilla descend from Morocco, they overwhelmingly want to remain Spanish and European citizens (+90%).
3) The reason for the above lies in the fact that Morocco is an authoritarian dictatorship and a police state. Who would want to be part of a country like that?
4) A final thought. Because of the need for its immigration control, Spain treats Morocco with exquisite diplomacy and patience. What I'm not sure Moroccan politicians realize is that if they ever try to replicate the Green March and occupy Ceuta and Melilla using its population, Spain will no longer have any incentive to apply this smooth policy. On the contrary, it will have all the incentives for a crushing military action.
Even though this last point is a tough one, I believe it is time that the Spanish government starts expressing itself clearly in this regard.
Morocco is doing what Morocco does, and what one would expect it to do. The problem here is that Spain is not acting like Spain. Why? Because it has a failed government—a government that no longer defends the interests of the nation, and one that has changed Spain’s foreign policy toward Morocco.
Look at the case of Western Sahara. It shows how, because of an intensely personal matter involving the prime minister, a country’s foreign policy can change.
The background to the Western Sahara case is that Morocco infected Prime Minister Sánchez’s mobile phone with Israeli spyware called Pegasus. Since then, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has been a hostage to the King of Morocco.
This is what should be analyzed.
And if you want another idea, you could try analyzing, from the first principles of geohistory, what has been happening in Spain during the last two terms of government. I think you could find the basis for a very interesting series of articles here.
All I know is, I saw the headline and thought, "Well, I can skip this one..." but 35 minutes later I have read and re-read the whole thing and have been looking up additional facts...so, well done!
This is not the first time Morocco used this tactics to put pressure on Spain.
In 2021 around 12000 migrants entered Ceuta. This was triggered by a diplomatic dispute between Morocco and Spain over the hospitalization of Sahrawi leader Brahim Ghali in Spain.
in 2005 there was another border assault, which led to between 13 and 18 people dead.
Given this information, the latest breach might have been concidental but I find it rather unlikely. It is more likely that this is a message from Morocco. Spain's sympathy for self-determination of the Western Sahara might be a factor.
Congratulations for an imppecable piece of work. However, the phrase "reaching Ceuta gives them nothing; they need to reach the European side of Spain" needs correction, as Ceuta is Europe, albeit not Schengen space.
Thank you Tomas, plenty of interesting information. Lot‘s if things that are important and good to know, like the control of the Strait that Ceuta gives to Spain. Curiously though, three words are completely missing from the articleY They are usually abbreviated: C.I.A.
Yeah I didn't find too much US involvement. Both countries are US allies, the current Spanish government is less aligned, but that's it. The CIA had an interesting role as a way to get info from things that happened in the past (eg, 1975), but I couldn't find anything else. Did I miss something?
Tomás, and who do you think Gibraltar should belong to? I’ve always struggled to reconcile Spain’s claims over its African enclaves with its position that Gibraltar should be Spanish. I think Ceuta’s crisis can’t be fully understood without taking Gibraltar into account.
A mi ya me da igual. Estoy completamente radicalizado. Vox se me hace moderado ya. Nunca me gustaron las teorías de conspiración, pero es difícil ver las decisiones de las elites los últimos 25 o 30 años y no pensar lo peor. Desde la energía al comercio pasando por la inmigración masiva y el caos y el desorden como una forma de bienestar. Occidente está tercermundista total. Y como México-español conozco bien el caos y el cada uno sálvese como pueda. Un pena enorme me da verlo cada vez más en Europa y EEUU.
Ceuta is in Africa and therefore I think Spain / Europe should not rule that territory. However, if the majority of the people who live there want to remain Spanish then that's the end of the question when it comes to the sovereignty.
Having said that, though, I think we're missing the point. With such an uneven planet, poor Africans will keep trying to move to rich Europe. And Spain just happens to be next to Africa. So this type of "invasion" will keep happening, by land or sea. Is the EU doing anything to help develop Africa?
Why is the fact that Ceuta is in Africa mean that Spain should not rule the territory?
(independently from the fact that the vast majority of Ceutans want to remain Spanish. The Muslim Ceutans (a large minority), don't vote for a pro-Moroccan party)
As I said, since the majority of Ceutans want to remain in Spain that's the end of the question. I believe in self determination, regardless of other considerations.
However, I don't agree with your comment that developing Africa is one way. In my opinion, developing Africa is the ONLY way. If we (Europeans) don't help fix the poverty there, no matter how many fences we put, we will keep getting immigrants seeking a better future. In the end, we will need to thank China for investing heavily on that continent and building infrastructure that hopefully will allow Africans to become wealthier.
I agree with much of your diagnosis of Morocco’s behavior. Using migration as political pressure is coercive, and Morocco’s historical claim to Ceuta and Melilla is far from obvious. But I think you move too quickly from “Morocco has a weak claim” to “therefore Spanish sovereignty is legitimate.” Those are two different questions.
Your main argument seems to be that Ceuta has been connected to Iberian kingdoms for centuries, has been Spanish for more than 400 years, and was conquered before modern Morocco existed. But isn’t that basically turning the duration of a conquest into legitimacy? The original acquisition was an act of force. Time can make it stable and politically difficult to reverse, but at what point does it make it right? After 100 years? 300? 500?
The same reasoning could have been used in ways you would probably reject. At different points in the Reconquista, Muslim polities had ruled parts of Iberia for centuries. Their defenders could have argued that this long and continuous rule gave them a better title than Christian kingdoms appealing to a much older past. And by the early 19th century, Spain had governed much of Latin America for around 300 years, while Argentina, Mexico or Colombia didn’t yet exist as independent states. Saying that Ceuta was Spanish before Morocco existed sounds uncomfortably close to saying that Spanish sovereignty in America predated the republics trying to become independent.
This is the basic problem: if being older than the postcolonial state made imperial sovereignty legitimate, decolonization would be almost impossible by definition.
I also don’t find the counting of “Christian” versus “Muslim” centuries very persuasive. Portugal and Spain aren’t the same sovereign because both were Christian. And the Umayyads, the Almoravids, the Almohads and modern Morocco aren’t the same claimant because they were Muslim. That turns a question about political sovereignty into a kind of civilizational scoreboard.
There’s also an asymmetry in how you treat continuity. Morocco is described as less than a century old, as though nothing before 1956 counts. Spain, meanwhile, gets a much broader continuity, across dynastic unions, different regimes and even an originally Portuguese conquest. But contemporary Spain is also a relatively recent political and constitutional arrangement. Either both countries can claim some continuity with earlier political communities, or neither can. You can’t use the narrow definition for one and the generous one for the other.
None of this means that Ceuta and Melilla should be Moroccan. I don’t think geography gives Morocco an automatic right to them, and transferring their inhabitants to Moroccan rule against their will would hardly qualify as decolonization.
Still, saying “the population wants to remain Spanish” doesn’t completely solve the problem either. Of course they do. Spain offers EU citizenship, higher incomes, better public services and stronger political rights. Morocco doesn’t. That preference is understandable and should be respected, but it isn’t neutral evidence that Spanish sovereignty was historically legitimate. Otherwise, a rich country could annex a poorer territory, integrate and subsidize it, and eventually point to the inhabitants’ rational preference for remaining part of the richer country as proof that the annexation had become legitimate.
This leaves us with two things that are both true. The current population can’t retrospectively legitimize every aspect of the original conquest. But the questionable origin of Spanish sovereignty also doesn’t justify handing them over to Morocco against their will.
And this is why I think the discussion shouldn’t be limited to “Spain or Morocco.” Independence, free association with Spain, or some other status preserving Spanish citizenship and economic ties could also exist. I’m not saying independence should be imposed, either.
Spain’s position is basically that Ceuta and Melilla don’t require decolonization because they are integral parts of Spain. But that feels circular: they aren’t colonies because Spain classified them as integral territory, and they are integral territory because Spain excluded them from the possessions it decolonized. At the very least, it’s strange that Spain left its protectorate in Morocco, Ifni and Spanish Sahara, but kept these two cities and several smaller territories on the North African coast.
So my objection isn’t that Ceuta and Melilla are obviously Moroccan. They aren’t. It’s that the weakness of Morocco’s claim doesn’t prove the strength of Spain’s, and counting centuries of control doesn’t really answer the moral or political question. History can show us how Spain came to control them. I’m not sure it can tell us why that control should be considered legitimate forever.
Lets not forget that 5000 immigrants in this MAJOR INCIDENT (!!) is roughly equal to the rate of 2-3 days of illegal immigration in the USA.
Yes, Spain, Morocco and other countries are playing political games as many stand to benefit from different outcomes, but 5k (or even 10k) immigrants who won’t all stay isn’t a big deal.
Hi Tomás, some other points we should consider:
1) 5000 remaining migrants (the government official numbers) is by far much less than reality that is for sure close to the double
2) Things are now exactly were Morocco would like them to be: Ceuta converted in the Spanish Lampedusa where no body wants to leave. All current Spanish inhabitants will progressively leave in the long term. No economic activities, nor investments, nor jobs will develop. Only a vulnerable flanc for Spain with progressively less interest to be defended. And this is the way for Morocco to get the city in the long term without having to engage in a conventional war.
3) The assumption that Morocco Secret Services was not behind this is naive. They were, even the development of the facts overcome their expectations and in a certain way, they loosed control
4) Finally the proof Morocco is satisfied with the current collapse of Ceuta they have provoked: if it was not intentional, they were already collaborating with Spanish administration with mixed teams of police (and other authorities) moved to Ceuta to help managing the return of the about 10000 remaining migrants in few weeks. A mixed team of Spanish-Morocco police would enormously facilitate and speed up the identification and returning process. They will not do this. They want the problem to become chronic.
Here are some additional ideas that I think are also relevant:
1) Morocco's claim to these territories is even weaker than Tomas pointed out. Of those 700 years under muslim rule, for hundreds of years, these territories were under the control of the muslim kingdoms rooted in the Iberian Peninsula, not in Morocco itself.
2) Even though close to 50% of the inhabitants of Ceuta and Melilla descend from Morocco, they overwhelmingly want to remain Spanish and European citizens (+90%).
3) The reason for the above lies in the fact that Morocco is an authoritarian dictatorship and a police state. Who would want to be part of a country like that?
4) A final thought. Because of the need for its immigration control, Spain treats Morocco with exquisite diplomacy and patience. What I'm not sure Moroccan politicians realize is that if they ever try to replicate the Green March and occupy Ceuta and Melilla using its population, Spain will no longer have any incentive to apply this smooth policy. On the contrary, it will have all the incentives for a crushing military action.
Even though this last point is a tough one, I believe it is time that the Spanish government starts expressing itself clearly in this regard.
Morocco is doing what Morocco does, and what one would expect it to do. The problem here is that Spain is not acting like Spain. Why? Because it has a failed government—a government that no longer defends the interests of the nation, and one that has changed Spain’s foreign policy toward Morocco.
Look at the case of Western Sahara. It shows how, because of an intensely personal matter involving the prime minister, a country’s foreign policy can change.
The background to the Western Sahara case is that Morocco infected Prime Minister Sánchez’s mobile phone with Israeli spyware called Pegasus. Since then, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has been a hostage to the King of Morocco.
This is what should be analyzed.
And if you want another idea, you could try analyzing, from the first principles of geohistory, what has been happening in Spain during the last two terms of government. I think you could find the basis for a very interesting series of articles here.
All I know is, I saw the headline and thought, "Well, I can skip this one..." but 35 minutes later I have read and re-read the whole thing and have been looking up additional facts...so, well done!
Amazing!
This is not the first time Morocco used this tactics to put pressure on Spain.
In 2021 around 12000 migrants entered Ceuta. This was triggered by a diplomatic dispute between Morocco and Spain over the hospitalization of Sahrawi leader Brahim Ghali in Spain.
in 2005 there was another border assault, which led to between 13 and 18 people dead.
Given this information, the latest breach might have been concidental but I find it rather unlikely. It is more likely that this is a message from Morocco. Spain's sympathy for self-determination of the Western Sahara might be a factor.
once these movements of people were called invasions and definitely caused a war
Congratulations for an imppecable piece of work. However, the phrase "reaching Ceuta gives them nothing; they need to reach the European side of Spain" needs correction, as Ceuta is Europe, albeit not Schengen space.
Ceuta is in Africa and in the European Union
22.5% of SPANISH men aged 15-25 are neither studying nor working. They just make more not doing it than Moroccans, I guess.
Thank you Tomas, plenty of interesting information. Lot‘s if things that are important and good to know, like the control of the Strait that Ceuta gives to Spain. Curiously though, three words are completely missing from the articleY They are usually abbreviated: C.I.A.
Thanks!
Yeah I didn't find too much US involvement. Both countries are US allies, the current Spanish government is less aligned, but that's it. The CIA had an interesting role as a way to get info from things that happened in the past (eg, 1975), but I couldn't find anything else. Did I miss something?
Tomás, and who do you think Gibraltar should belong to? I’ve always struggled to reconcile Spain’s claims over its African enclaves with its position that Gibraltar should be Spanish. I think Ceuta’s crisis can’t be fully understood without taking Gibraltar into account.
A mi ya me da igual. Estoy completamente radicalizado. Vox se me hace moderado ya. Nunca me gustaron las teorías de conspiración, pero es difícil ver las decisiones de las elites los últimos 25 o 30 años y no pensar lo peor. Desde la energía al comercio pasando por la inmigración masiva y el caos y el desorden como una forma de bienestar. Occidente está tercermundista total. Y como México-español conozco bien el caos y el cada uno sálvese como pueda. Un pena enorme me da verlo cada vez más en Europa y EEUU.
Ceuta is in Africa and therefore I think Spain / Europe should not rule that territory. However, if the majority of the people who live there want to remain Spanish then that's the end of the question when it comes to the sovereignty.
Having said that, though, I think we're missing the point. With such an uneven planet, poor Africans will keep trying to move to rich Europe. And Spain just happens to be next to Africa. So this type of "invasion" will keep happening, by land or sea. Is the EU doing anything to help develop Africa?
Can you expand on that logic?
Why is the fact that Ceuta is in Africa mean that Spain should not rule the territory?
(independently from the fact that the vast majority of Ceutans want to remain Spanish. The Muslim Ceutans (a large minority), don't vote for a pro-Moroccan party)
https://seguridadinternacional.es/resi/html/representacion-politica-e-identidad-local-en-ceuta-1975-2023/
Developing Africa is one way. Africa is 20 times more populated than Spain though. Not viable.
As I said, since the majority of Ceutans want to remain in Spain that's the end of the question. I believe in self determination, regardless of other considerations.
However, I don't agree with your comment that developing Africa is one way. In my opinion, developing Africa is the ONLY way. If we (Europeans) don't help fix the poverty there, no matter how many fences we put, we will keep getting immigrants seeking a better future. In the end, we will need to thank China for investing heavily on that continent and building infrastructure that hopefully will allow Africans to become wealthier.
I agree with much of your diagnosis of Morocco’s behavior. Using migration as political pressure is coercive, and Morocco’s historical claim to Ceuta and Melilla is far from obvious. But I think you move too quickly from “Morocco has a weak claim” to “therefore Spanish sovereignty is legitimate.” Those are two different questions.
Your main argument seems to be that Ceuta has been connected to Iberian kingdoms for centuries, has been Spanish for more than 400 years, and was conquered before modern Morocco existed. But isn’t that basically turning the duration of a conquest into legitimacy? The original acquisition was an act of force. Time can make it stable and politically difficult to reverse, but at what point does it make it right? After 100 years? 300? 500?
The same reasoning could have been used in ways you would probably reject. At different points in the Reconquista, Muslim polities had ruled parts of Iberia for centuries. Their defenders could have argued that this long and continuous rule gave them a better title than Christian kingdoms appealing to a much older past. And by the early 19th century, Spain had governed much of Latin America for around 300 years, while Argentina, Mexico or Colombia didn’t yet exist as independent states. Saying that Ceuta was Spanish before Morocco existed sounds uncomfortably close to saying that Spanish sovereignty in America predated the republics trying to become independent.
This is the basic problem: if being older than the postcolonial state made imperial sovereignty legitimate, decolonization would be almost impossible by definition.
I also don’t find the counting of “Christian” versus “Muslim” centuries very persuasive. Portugal and Spain aren’t the same sovereign because both were Christian. And the Umayyads, the Almoravids, the Almohads and modern Morocco aren’t the same claimant because they were Muslim. That turns a question about political sovereignty into a kind of civilizational scoreboard.
There’s also an asymmetry in how you treat continuity. Morocco is described as less than a century old, as though nothing before 1956 counts. Spain, meanwhile, gets a much broader continuity, across dynastic unions, different regimes and even an originally Portuguese conquest. But contemporary Spain is also a relatively recent political and constitutional arrangement. Either both countries can claim some continuity with earlier political communities, or neither can. You can’t use the narrow definition for one and the generous one for the other.
None of this means that Ceuta and Melilla should be Moroccan. I don’t think geography gives Morocco an automatic right to them, and transferring their inhabitants to Moroccan rule against their will would hardly qualify as decolonization.
Still, saying “the population wants to remain Spanish” doesn’t completely solve the problem either. Of course they do. Spain offers EU citizenship, higher incomes, better public services and stronger political rights. Morocco doesn’t. That preference is understandable and should be respected, but it isn’t neutral evidence that Spanish sovereignty was historically legitimate. Otherwise, a rich country could annex a poorer territory, integrate and subsidize it, and eventually point to the inhabitants’ rational preference for remaining part of the richer country as proof that the annexation had become legitimate.
This leaves us with two things that are both true. The current population can’t retrospectively legitimize every aspect of the original conquest. But the questionable origin of Spanish sovereignty also doesn’t justify handing them over to Morocco against their will.
And this is why I think the discussion shouldn’t be limited to “Spain or Morocco.” Independence, free association with Spain, or some other status preserving Spanish citizenship and economic ties could also exist. I’m not saying independence should be imposed, either.
Spain’s position is basically that Ceuta and Melilla don’t require decolonization because they are integral parts of Spain. But that feels circular: they aren’t colonies because Spain classified them as integral territory, and they are integral territory because Spain excluded them from the possessions it decolonized. At the very least, it’s strange that Spain left its protectorate in Morocco, Ifni and Spanish Sahara, but kept these two cities and several smaller territories on the North African coast.
So my objection isn’t that Ceuta and Melilla are obviously Moroccan. They aren’t. It’s that the weakness of Morocco’s claim doesn’t prove the strength of Spain’s, and counting centuries of control doesn’t really answer the moral or political question. History can show us how Spain came to control them. I’m not sure it can tell us why that control should be considered legitimate forever.
The line about What Is Happening in Ceuta? On is the useful hinge. That is where the argument gets practical.
Muy interesante, Tomas. He conocido un poco de la historia moderna de Ceuta y Melilla, pero este articulo lo explica enteramente. Muchas gracias. T
Lets not forget that 5000 immigrants in this MAJOR INCIDENT (!!) is roughly equal to the rate of 2-3 days of illegal immigration in the USA.
Yes, Spain, Morocco and other countries are playing political games as many stand to benefit from different outcomes, but 5k (or even 10k) immigrants who won’t all stay isn’t a big deal.