The context is that could not happen without the cooperation and orchestration by the Moroccan government, and its a kind of warning. Its a warning on recent warm up of relations of Spain with Algeria [2]. Something that is of great strategic concern due to historical disputes over the Western Sahara. [1]
The Spanish prime minister of course is totally compromised, and weak in all fronts.
His wife will stand trial for corruption [3] and he had to cynically support a measure to do regularization program for undocumented migrants that could get up to 1 million getting regular papers. Independently of the merits or not of the program, he did this agreement with the left-wing party Podemos in January 2026. Sánchez leads a minority government and depends on smaller parties for parliamentary support, so reaching deals with Podemos basically allowed him to continue in government.
Weird how these streams of immigrants are always young men, and almost never families or groups of women and children actually fleeing some real war or oppression.
Illegaly crossing a border is difficult. Better have the young men take a shot. Then after a year when they settle in Europe they use family reunification policies to get the rest of the family over, by airplane.
On some of the videos it looked like a lot of the people came just in swim shorts and without a T-shirt. I can imagine if I was a teenager at the border and an opportunity came to check out Ceuta, I would also jump in. Fits also with the fact that about half of the people who crossed the border have already returned.
"Spains PM blames trafficers"
The spanish government and security services had well over a day to do something before the operation was launched, instead they have chosen to do nothing.
"Some 48,000 of the roughly 50,000 people who crossed illegally into Ceuta since early Friday have already been returned to Morocco, as Madrid condemned the mass crossing as an "attack" on its sovereignty."
Very low quality sources say things like:
- The police are shipping people to the border
- These are all criminals that the police are letting get away so they don't have to deal with them
- People are fleeing the absolute monarchy and poor economic conditions
If anyone has any high quality sources about the above please post them!