- 4 days ago
The Ceuta crisis became one of the most widely discussed migration events in recent European history, drawing attention from policymakers, human rights organizations, journalists, and the general public.
At the center of the debate was a simple but highly contested question: how many migrants really went back to Morocco after crossing into Ceuta?
The answer is more complicated than a single headline figure, because the situation involved rapid border movements, immediate returns, voluntary departures, and administrative processes that were not always transparent.
At the center of the debate was a simple but highly contested question: how many migrants really went back to Morocco after crossing into Ceuta?
The answer is more complicated than a single headline figure, because the situation involved rapid border movements, immediate returns, voluntary departures, and administrative processes that were not always transparent.
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00:0650,000 people, or was it 60,000? Spain's own government could not agree on how many migrants
00:12stormed Ceuta in one day. Then, overnight, officials said nearly all of them went back
00:16to Morocco. But the numbers kept changing, and nobody could explain the gap. Let's break it down.
00:21The numbers that never matched. To understand why the return numbers make no sense,
00:26you first have to understand that the entry numbers never made sense either. It all started
00:30in the early hours of Thursday, July 30, 2026. That morning, tens of thousands of people began
00:35pouring across the border from Morocco into Ceuta, a tiny Spanish city sitting on the North African
00:40coast. They did not come through the gates. They swam around the coastal breakwaters at
00:44Tarijil and Benzu, floating on inner tubes and improvised rafts. Others walked the shoreline
00:49at low tide or climbed over sections of the border fence. Crowds massed on the Moroccan side near
00:53F. Nighting, and some groups passed through monitored areas with little immediate resistance.
00:58News crews on the ground noticed something odd about how easy it all was.
01:01Unlike previous attempts, migrants reached Ceuta's border fence with ease. Some walked
01:06along the jetty before swimming around the beaches. And that ease raised a question nobody
01:11could answer on day one. And it remains unclear why the Moroccan border guards did not intervene.
01:17So even the start of this story is murky. The BBC's correspondent described what happened
01:21when those crowds made it across. And then scenes of utter jubilation for those who made it
01:26across the border as they touched down on the beaches there. For the people arriving,
01:31this was a moment of pure triumph. Some of them kissing the ground, chanting Viva España,
01:37smiling and doing victory signs to the cameras. Most of them were young Moroccan men, but there were
01:42women, children, whole families, and unaccompanied minors among them. Some sub-Saharan Africans were
01:47reported in the crowds too. And this was not a total surprise. Arrivals had been climbing for
01:51weeks. More than 1,500 people had crossed in the week before. And land arrivals into Ceuta were
01:56already up around 149% by mid-July compared with the year before. Reception facilities for
02:02unaccompanied minors were already operating at up to 1,600 to 2,400% of normal capacity in the days
02:09before the surge. So how many people actually came in? That depends entirely on who you ask.
02:14Spain's interior ministry said around 50,000 people crossed in roughly a 24-hour window,
02:19a figure sometimes cited as more than 49,000. But the man running the city itself told a very
02:24different story. Ceuta's president, Juan Jesús Vivas, put the figure at up to 60,000. That is
02:29a gap of about 10,000 human beings. 10,000 people who either existed or did not, depending on which
02:35official was holding the microphone. And Vivas did not soften his words.
02:48Unsustainable was almost an understatement. Listen to the number he gave, because it is even bigger
02:53than the ministry's count. Las estimaciones apuntan a que en nuestra ciudad han entrado con motivo
02:59de este episodio unas 60,000 personas. 60,000 people in a city whose normal population
03:06is only about 83,000 to 85,000. Vivas did the math out loud so nobody could miss it. Eso
03:12significa
03:13el 70% de la población de Ceuta. Then he gave the rest of Spain a comparison
03:18designed to stop people in their tracks. Imagine that scale for a second, one single day,
03:28and then he finished the thought. 34 million. That was his way of explaining what 70% of a
03:40city's population arriving in one day actually feels like. He described exactly what that scale
03:46was doing to his citizens. La ciudadanía tiene de inseguridad, de inquietud, de impotencia y en
03:53algunos casos de abandono. And the scale truly was historic. This dwarfed the May 2021 crisis,
03:59when around 8,000 to 10,000 people entered over two days. The BBC's correspondent made the comparison
04:05directly. People, the biggest number of migrants making that crossing since a previous incident back
04:10in 2021. And here is the detail that matters for everything that comes next. Even in 2021,
04:16Spanish authorities later admitted they could not count the arrivals exactly, and the surge was
04:20excluded from some annual statistics. If Spain could not count 10,000 people in 2021, what chance did it
04:26have with five or six times that number? The honest answer came from Interior Minister Fernando Gran
04:31Marleska himself. He admitted the total was approximate, somewhere between 50,000 and 60,000,
04:36saying that with such a large and chaotic volume it is very difficult to concretize completely.
04:41Why was it so hard? Because border registration collapsed. People moved in both directions at the
04:45same time. Many entered by swimming around the breakwater or through gaps, never touching a formal
04:50checkpoint. There was no comprehensive individual registration and no biometric processing in the
04:54initial surge. So why were people risking their lives to get in? One young man at the border fence
04:59told the Associated Press exactly why. Pressure, poverty, and a closed door. That was the fuel.
05:12But here is the thing. Nobody entering Ceuta that Thursday was ever officially counted. Which means
05:17that when Spain started announcing, hour by hour, exactly how many of them had gone back to Morocco,
05:22those return numbers were being measured against an entry number that was never real in the first place.
05:26And that is where this story gets strange. The fastest exodus nobody could count
05:31By Friday morning, July 31, something almost nobody predicted began to happen. The flood reversed.
05:37People started walking back into Morocco and they started doing it in massive numbers. Why would
05:41tens of thousands of people fight so hard to get in then turn around within a day? The reasons were
05:46brutally simple. There was no food, no water, and no shelter in Ceuta. Spanish authorities deliberately did
05:51not provide broad assistance in order to discourage anyone from staying. Soldiers and police directed
05:56people back toward the border. And Morocco cooperated on taking people back. Thousands of people,
06:00including miners, had spent the night sleeping in parks and on pavements. Shops and bars were closed,
06:05and local Guardia civil representatives described the scene as chaotic and a serious humanitarian crisis.
06:10Spain was also flooding the city with force. Around 200 specialized police and 60 troops were sent from
06:16the mainland, with further reinforcements behind them. As the army deployed for logistics,
06:20rescue, and order. The BBC was reporting the deployment as it happened.
06:25About that, but yeah, there are around 60 soldiers heading from Spain to reinforce the border,
06:30also a number. On the other side of the fence, Moroccan forces used water cannons, tear gas,
06:35batons, and riot gear to push back the crowds still gathered in Fnitik, where vehicles were burned
06:39in clashes. The door was closing from both sides. Morocco's own ambassador to Spain insisted the
06:44situation was not desired by the kingdom, and that Morocco preferred legal and orderly migration.
06:48And there was one more crushing fact working against the people who made it in.
06:52Ceuta is Spanish territory, but free movement to mainland Spain does not automatically apply.
06:57Identity and border checks are conducted on anyone trying to leave the enclave for the peninsula.
07:01In other words, they had swum into a locked room. Many Moroccan migrants returned voluntarily,
07:05once they realized there was no easy path to mainland Spain and no better conditions waiting for them.
07:10One of them summed up the whiplash of that decision on camera. Others made the opposite choice.
07:14At first I wanted to go back to Morocco, but now I've changed my mind. I want to stay here.
07:18I want to go stay to Spain.
07:20And begged the people still coming to stop. Now watch how the official return numbers evolved,
07:24because this is the heart of the whole story. I beg you, please, if you haven't come yet,
07:28don't come. Don't do it. By around midday on Friday, officials said roughly 25,000 people had
07:34returned. Then, just hours later, the figure jumped. News channels were updating it live.
07:39More than 37,000. However, the Spanish Interior Ministry is now saying that more than 37,000
07:44migrants have returned voluntarily to Morocco. And the speed of the exodus was almost impossible
07:49to picture. The ministry has said that the rate of departures from Siota is at 150 people per minute.
07:55150 people per minute. Think about what counting that would even look like. That is more than two
07:59people crossing back every single sec at multiple points, through official posts, through gaps and
08:04across beaches. Then came the evening figure, the one that would be quoted everywhere. By 6pm on Friday,
08:09the Interior Ministry reported that 48,300 people had already returned to Morocco. 48,300, not about
08:1748,000, not roughly 50,000. A precise number, down to the hundred, produced by the same government that
08:23admitted it could not count the people coming in. And that precise number only works if you accept the
08:27ministry's own lower entry estimate. The figure was explicitly relative to the ministry's roughly
08:3250,000 entry count. If Vivas was right, and 60,000 entered, then roughly 10,000 people were simply not
08:38in the equation. By Saturday, August 1, the government declared victory. Gran Marleska said the situation
08:44had been almost entirely reversed in about 24 to 48 hours. He even turned it into a boast about
08:49Spanish efficiency. But listen closely to how he actually described the numbers, because he admitted
09:05the problem out loud in the very same interview. Difficult to complete the count of people coming in,
09:15and then, in the very next breath, the count of people going out.
09:24So the entries could not be counted, and the exits could not be counted. Yet the official conclusion
09:29was delivered with total confidence.
09:38Almost all of them, based on two numbers the minister himself said were impossible to pin down.
09:43His proof was not a spreadsheet, it was the streets.
09:54Shops were reopening, and residents were coming back out. In his own words, the city had reached
09:59something short of normal, but close.
10:07A reasonable normality, but reasonable normality is not arithmetic. And when you actually sit down
10:13with the numbers Spain published, hour by hour, they raise questions that have never been fully
10:18answered. The gaps the official record cannot explain. Let's lay out the inconsistencies one by one. First, the
10:25entry gap. The interior ministry said about 50,000 entered. Sayuda's own president set up to 60,000.
10:3110,000 people of difference, never reconciled. Second, the moving return figures. 25,000 by midday.
10:37Over 37,500 by mid-afternoon. 48,300 by 6 p.m. all in a single day. All revised upward.
10:45All while officials
10:46admitted no exact count existed. Even the allies helping Spain used different math. French President Emmanuel
10:51Macron cited more than 40,000 returns that same day. A figure that matched none of Madrid's official
10:56checkpoints. Third, the people left behind. Roughly 400 holdouts remained. Often sub-Saharan
11:02Africans determined to stay and seek asylum. Gathered on beaches like Trampolin, waiting for
11:07processing at the temporary immigrant stay center which was already overwhelmed. While a handful of
11:11new arrivals kept being escorted back. 400 out of 50 or 60,000. The rest, the government insisted,
11:16had gone home. And there was a fourth number that kept changing too, and this one is the darkest.
11:20The death toll. Early on, the BBC was reporting a figure that now looks tragically small.
11:26At least 15 people drowned trying to make it onto EU territory. 15, then the tallies climbed through
11:32the day. Partial counts range from 19 to 43. By Friday evening, at least 57 bodies had been recovered
11:38on the Spanish side. People who drowned during the swim or were crushed in the stampede at the
11:41Terrigal Breakwater. And it did not stop there. Grand Marleska later revised the toll to at least 67.
11:47And additional casualties on the Moroccan side were possible, but never confirmed in the same detail.
11:52The death count more than quadrupled in two days. How much faith should we place in a return count
11:56precise to the 100? So why did this even happen? A Spanish Supreme Court ruling from late June,
12:01notified in early July, had restricted summery hot returns for people arriving by swimming. The court
12:06decided the sea is not a physical containment element, so swimmers could not be instantly pushed
12:10back the way fence climbers could. The BBC's correspondent explained the theory circulating
12:16at the time. Whether traffickers have essentially got the message from Spain's Supreme Court,
12:22which ruled earlier this month that anyone who made that crossing by sea would not be immediately
12:27returned to Morocco. Spain's Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, flew to Ceuta, visited the Terrigal border
12:34area, and blamed human trafficking mafias for spreading an interested reading of that ruling,
12:38which produced the avalanche. His verdict on the crossings was blistering.
12:43We define what happened yesterday as an attack, a violation of Spain's territorial integrity.
12:49And he made clear this was not just about numbers, it was about sovereignty.
12:53Ceuta is a Spanish city, and what happened yesterday deserves our strongest possible rebuke
12:59and condemnation. He announced buoys and physical markers at the Terrigal breakwater, so future sea
13:04arrivals would fall back under the summary return regime, confirmed accelerated identification and
13:09expulsion procedures with a temporary reception centre, and stressed that those who entered
13:13irregularly had no option of regularisation. New pneumatic floating barriers were rapidly
13:17installed at Terrigal. Meanwhile, Europe reacted as if the numbers were rock solid.
13:22France intensified its existing border controls, tripling reinforcements to 184 extra police on Friday and
13:28scaling to 334 police and gendarmes from Saturday, with aircraft, drones and train patrols. French
13:35Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said he had given instructions as of Thursday evening, and activated
13:39the Rapid Border Intervention Force for in-depth checks at the Spanish border. Italy went further.
13:44Now, Italy's threatened to suspend the Open Border Schengen Agreement with Spain.
13:49And it followed through. Italy formally suspended Schengen-free movement with Spain for one month,
13:54reintroducing controls on air and sea links. Here is the twist, though. The European Commission
13:58confirmed there were no observed onward movements from Ceuta into the European mainland at the time,
14:03because the enclave is treated as an external border, where checks remain mandatory for anyone
14:07travelling on to the Spanish mainland. Europe was slamming doors against a wave that,
14:11according to the data, was not moving. Sanchez fired back at Italy that solidarity and empathy are
14:16optional, but respect for European treaties and data is not, citing Frontex figures showing Italy had
14:21recorded far more irregular entries than Spain since 2021, and Spain even summoned the Italian
14:26ambassador. Notice the irony there. Spain defended itself with data, in the middle of a crisis where
14:31its own data kept shifting. And that points to the final, uncomfortable truth. The numbers served two
14:36political purposes at once. They highlighted how severe the crisis was, and they demonstrated how
14:41quickly control was restored. A bigger entry number proved the emergency. A bigger return number
14:45proved the response. So where does that leave us? The bulk of the roughly 50-60,000 who entered did
14:50return to Morocco within a day or two, but the exact numbers remain approximate. The gap between 50
14:55and 60,000 entries, the stepwise upward revisions of returns, and the government's own admission that
15:00precise counting was impossible form the core inconsistency in the official record. 48,300 went
15:06back. Officially, whether that number describes reality, or simply describes the story Spain needed to
15:11tell, is a question the record cannot answer. If you found this breakdown useful, click on one of the
15:16cards on your screen like this to see more videos like this.
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