Influx of migrants to Ceuta gives Spain diplomatic headache

As many of the 60,000 migrants who swam or scrambled their way into Ceuta trickle back into Morocco, the prospect of a dramatic crisis has begun to gently recede.

The political and diplomatic pressure that had piled onto prime minister Pedro Sánchez after the breaching of this key border outpost may begin to fade as an expanded military and police deployment makes itself felt and the authorities process and return those new arrivals who don't leave of their own volition and fail to qualify for a right to remain.

Many appeared to be Moroccan locals, quite unprepared for the sort of arduous long distance trek undertaken by sub-Saharan migrants who cross the Sahara or risk their lives in fishing boats crossing to the Canary Islands.

Sánchez had rushed to Ceuta on Friday morning to accuse migrant traffickers of exploiting a recent supreme court decision that had constrained the government's right to immediately deport people who had arrived by sea.

The last such big incursion into Ceuta, in 2021, saw 10,000 break into the territory, just a sixth of the number estimated to have climbed over or through or swum around its boundary fence in less than 24 hours this time.

In immediate practical terms this episode appears to have been encouraged by Moroccan border guards' readiness to stand aside and allow anyone – mostly younger or middle aged men but also some women and children - to try to penetrate this nugget of European Union territory on the North African coast, whatever the risks.

And those were considerable: at least 57 people died in the attempt, many seemingly drowned.

France too has struggled to maintain warm relations with the two bitterly opposed Maghreb rivals. But it is Spain that finds itself particularly vulnerable because of Ceuta and Melilla.

Both towns have origins dating back millennia to the Phoenician era, then later fell under Arab rule before being seized by Spain in the 16th Century, in the aftermath of the Christian reconquest of the Iberian peninsula.

But in practical modern terms, both are outposts of EU terrain on the southern shore of the Mediterranean, bounded on the landward side only by Morocco.

So yesterday's influx of migrants, however temporary, is a practical challenge for Sánchez and a political and diplomatic headache. Spain's mainstream conservatives - the Partido Popular - and hard right Vox have seized on the issue, while several other European governments have raised concerns, with Italy talking of suspending Spanish membership of the Schengen open borders regime.

But actually, because of the distinctive geographical position of Ceuta and Melilla, Spain operates a strict internal border on flights and ferries from these two cities to the mainland, thus controlling travellers' access to the rest of Schengen Europe.

Behind the fuss over yesterday's dramatic influx of people lies a deeper difference in outlook and policy.

Sanchez has pursued an "immigration positive" agenda starkly contrasting with the more restrictive attitudes of most EU states or the UK, even instigating a programme to bring Senegalese to Spain on a temporary basis as seasonal workers, mainly for the horticultural sector.

The long term political and economic sustainability of that approach remains to be tested. But it sends out a public messaging that some other European governments perhaps find unsettling and may explain their reaction to events in Ceuta.

Paul Melly is a consulting fellow with the Africa Programme at Chatham House in London

Reporting from BBC News contributed to this story.