Madrid spent Tuesday trying to look like it is finally in charge of the Ceuta crisis. The cabinet declared the situation a matter of national security, put Territorial Policy Minister Ángel Víctor Torres in charge of a new “single command,” and moved to rewrite Spain’s asylum and immigration laws so they match the European Union’s Migration and Asylum Pact. The European Commission, in Brussels, confirmed it had received a formal Spanish request for emergency funding the day before and said it was treating the file as a priority.
The surge itself is almost a month old. At the end of July, tens of thousands of people crossed from Morocco into Ceuta, a Spanish city on the North African coast with a population of about 84,000. Most swam around the border fence. Death tolls differ by source: Al Jazeera cited official figures of at least 90 dead on both sides of the border, while Ceuta’s mayor has spoken of at least 100. The vast majority of those who made it in were sent back to Morocco within hours. Several thousand remain, including unaccompanied children who cannot simply be deported.
Torres told reporters the priority is returning as many people as possible, adults and minors, while staying inside Spanish law and human-rights rules. Humanitarian help is supposed to continue for people who seek asylum and for children who cannot be sent back. Ceuta’s conservative local government has been complaining for weeks that identification and returns are too slow. An attempt to move hundreds of migrant children to mainland Spain has stalled in a three-way fight among the national government, the opposition, and the city.
The legal rewrite is bigger than Ceuta. Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said the point is an “orderly, efficient” system with guarantees. On paper, that means bringing Spanish law into line with the EU pact that took effect on June 12, including a new “screening” procedure at the border. Spain wants to cap the medical, biometric, and legal check on arrival at three days; EU rules allow up to seven. There would also be a two-speed asylum track meant to hurry cases labeled urgent. The same package will apply to the Canary Islands, where boat arrivals have been rising. Spain had earlier resisted large parts of the harder-line European approach.
Defence Minister Margarita Robles went to parliament and apologized to Ceuta’s residents for making them feel abandoned. She also said Spanish intelligence had flagged a possible crossing shortly before it happened. Grande-Marlaska appeared to disagree, saying there was no report hinting at what unfolded on July 30. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has blamed traffickers and social media, and has not given a full public accounting since he visited the city on July 31. Morocco’s justice minister last week spoke of a “historical and geographical right” to Ceuta and Melilla. Robles told the committee she would not let any foreign minister question those cities’ status as Spanish.