- 23 minutes ago
Pedro Sánchez’s visit to Ceuta became a headline-grabbing political episode that drew intense attention across Spain and beyond. The moment was widely interpreted as a sign of public frustration, especially in a city that has long lived under the pressure of border tensions, migration debates, and disputes over national investment. For many observers, the scene was not simply about one protest, but about a deeper conflict between institutions and citizens who feel ignored. The political symbolism of Ceuta made the event even more significant, turning a local outburst into a national conversation. In that context, the phrase “Pedro Sánchez humiliated by angry protesters in Ceuta” became more than a dramatic description; it became a shorthand for mounting discontent.
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00:07He landed by helicopter expecting gratitude.
00:10Instead, Pedro Sánchez was humiliated by angry protesters in Ceuta,
00:14met with whistles, curses, and a city that wanted him gone.
00:17Days earlier, 50,000 people had crossed the border in under two days.
00:20What they left behind was chaos nobody planned for.
00:25Sánchez's nightmare that began as revenge
00:27On Friday, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez traveled to Ceuta,
00:31and he was greeted with insults from protesters before he could even fix his tie.
00:35He flew in by helicopter with his interior minister, Fernando Gran Marlaska.
00:39He walked out looking like a man who expected a warm welcome.
00:42What he got was a wall of noise.
00:43The moment his shoes touched the heliport, the crowd let him have it.
00:46Hundreds of residents had gathered with horns and whistles,
00:49and their favorite chant for the Prime Minister was a two-word insult
00:52that translates politely to son of a...
00:54not exactly the red carpet.
00:56That was only the warm-up.
00:57They chanted for him to quit, screaming Sánchez de Mision,
01:00which simply means Sánchez, resign.
01:01Outside the Assembly Palace, they waved Spanish flags and shouted,
01:05Ceuta no se vend, or Ceuta is not for sale.
01:07They called him a sellout.
01:08They blamed him for ruining their shops.
01:10Behind the barriers, Vox politicians cheered the mob on like fans at a match,
01:13and the local president, Juan Jesses Vivas,
01:15was not even standing beside him when he gave his statement.
01:18Spanish media did not call it a visit.
01:20They called him despidito, sent off, humiliated, in about three hours flat.
01:24So how does a whole city turn on its own leader in a single afternoon?
01:28For that, we rewind a few days.
01:29It starts of all places with a court.
01:31On 29 June 2026, Spain's Supreme Court handed down a ruling called Judgment 814-2026.
01:38In plain words it said this.
01:39If a migrant swims around the border into Ceuta,
01:41Spain can no longer just hand them straight back.
01:43The sea the judges decided is not a fence.
01:45So anyone caught in the water now gets the full process.
01:47A file, a lawyer, a translator, and the right to ask for asylum.
01:51That can take months.
01:52Now here is where it gets messy.
01:54Human smugglers read that ruling and they twisted it.
01:56They spread a rumor across social media and WhatsApp that said, more or less,
02:00swim to Ceuta and Spain can never send you home.
02:03It was not true, but it did not have to be true.
02:05It only had to spread and spread it.
02:07The ground was already dry.
02:08Irregular arrivals in Ceuta were up 149% in the first half of 2026 compared to the year before.
02:14Young people in Morocco were fed up, facing high unemployment,
02:17and a wave of Gen Z protests demanding jobs.
02:19Add a rumor of easy entry into Europe, and you have a stampede waiting to happen.
02:23It did not help that Sanchez government had passed a huge amnesty back in January 2026
02:28for over a million undocumented people already living in Spain,
02:32which critics say only sweetened the pull.
02:34Then the dam broke.
02:35Between the 29th and the 31st of July,
02:37somewhere between 50,000 and 60,000 people crossed from Morocco into Ceuta.
02:41Remember, this is a city of roughly 83,000 residents.
02:44In under 48 hours, it absorbed the equivalent of most of its own population.
02:48Most swam around the territorial breakwater or waded across at low tide.
02:51Others climbed fences or slipped through gates.
02:53And on the Moroccan side, the guards who normally stop this.
02:56Witnesses say plenty of them simply watched.
02:59Videos hit the internet like a bomb.
03:01Footage showed crowds sprinting toward the city center.
03:03Some shouting, Viva España.
03:05Exhausted, thrilled, and mostly unsure of where they were even going.
03:08The world reacted fast.
03:09The White House pointed the finger straight at Sanchez's policies.
03:12Italy briefly suspended its open border Schengen checks for arrivals coming from Spain.
03:16Overnight, a local border story became a global headache.
03:19But the numbers hide the horror.
03:21This was no happy day trip.
03:22Spanish authorities say at least 72 people died.
03:25Some drowned in the rough Mediterranean.
03:27Others were crushed in a stampede on the breakwater.
03:29Ceuta's hospitals, shelters, and Red Cross posts collapsed under the weight.
03:33Reception centers ran at 1,600% of capacity.
03:36That is not a typo.
03:37The number of unaccompanied children jumped from around 180 to over 570.
03:42Part of an estimated 7,000 miners, with some kids sleeping in the streets because there
03:47was nowhere to send them.
03:48Food started running short.
03:49Then, almost as fast as it began, it emptied.
03:52Once the migrants realized Ceuta had no jobs, no housing, and no golden ticket, most turned
03:56around and walked back to Morocco on their own.
03:59By Friday evening, more than 48,000 had already returned.
04:02Which brings us back to Friday, and to Sanchez standing in front of a furious city, trying very
04:07hard to sound like a man in control.
04:09He led with comfort.
04:10Ceuta, and in second place, telling the Ceutis that all Spain is with them.
04:15All Spain is with them.
04:16All of Spain was with them.
04:17The crowd outside, whistling through the walls, did not seem convinced.
04:21So he changed gears and reached for tougher language.
04:23In second place, defining what has happened yesterday as an attack, a violation of the
04:30territorial integrity of Spain.
04:31An attack, strong words for a crowd mostly armed with swimming trunks and life vests.
04:36But Sanchez was not blaming the swimmers.
04:38He was building toward a single villain.
04:47He kept going with that same thought, laying the whole disaster at the feet of the smugglers
04:52in one specific document.
04:57There it was, the court ruling again.
04:59In his telling, the mafias took that judgment, twisted it, and lit the fuse.
05:10Wildfire, fair choice of word for a lie that pulled 50,000 people into the sea.
05:14Then he pivoted to defense, because he wanted everyone watching to see this as one terrible
05:18week, not a broken system.
05:26Down by more than a third, he insisted, a confident stat to drop while a city screams
05:31for your resignation.
05:32To his credit, though, he did not pretend the human cost away.
05:41Then came the big promise, delivered with the calm of a man being booed through concrete.
05:54Ceuta, he said, would be defended like the heart of the capital.
05:57He refused to declare a national emergency, arguing the government did not yet grasp the
06:01full size of the problem.
06:02He announced more police, more troops, and a curious plan to drop a line of floating buoys
06:06in the water to act as a pretend fence, just so the court's ruling would not apply.
06:09Roughly 90 minutes later, he was gone.
06:11The city was left with its anger, its grief, and its canceled summer fair.
06:15And if all of this felt painfully familiar to the people of Ceuta, that is because they
06:19had already lived a smaller version of it, only five years earlier.
06:24Spain had already lived this exact nightmare once in 2021.
06:28Rewind to May 2021.
06:30Same city, same fence, same helicopter landing.
06:33Different numbers but the very same shock.
06:35Back then, between 8,000 and 12,000 people poured into Ceuta in about 48 hours, with as
06:40many as 6,000 crossing in a single day.
06:42At the time, that was the largest irregular crossing into Ceuta since Spain became a democracy.
06:47Just like 2026, most were young Moroccan men, though that wave also swept in around 1,500
06:53unaccompanied children.
06:55But here is the twist that makes 2021 so important.
06:58That crisis was not really about migration at all, it was about revenge.
07:02Relations between Madrid and Rabat had gone cold in April 2021.
07:06Spain quietly let a man named Brahim Ghali into a hospital in Logroño to treat his COVID.
07:11Ghali runs the Polisario Front, the movement fighting for independence in Western Sahara,
07:15and Morocco considers him an enemy.
07:17Rabat felt betrayed.
07:18The timing was raw too, because only months earlier, in December 2020, the sitting United
07:23States president had recognized Moroccan control over Western Sahara.
07:27So when Spain gave shelter to Rabat's enemy, Morocco decided to teach its neighbor a lesson.
07:31The lesson was simple.
07:33Morocco loosened its grip on the border.
07:35Gendarmes stood aside, opened gates, and let people swim around the breakwaters.
07:39Videos later showed officers waving crowds through.
07:42Rabat blamed it on tired guards during Ramadan, but nobody was fooled.
07:45It was leverage, plain, and simple.
07:47The methods were the ones we would see again.
07:49People swam around the Terragil breakwater and the Benzupir, or waited at low tide,
07:53many using inflatable rings and life vests, mostly under cover of night.
07:57Around 80-90% were Moroccan, many from the nearby town of Efnidik.
08:01At least two people drowned.
08:02One photo went around the world, showing a Spanish civil guard officer cradling a rescued
08:06baby lifted from the water.
08:08Spain's response then was a rough draft of its response now.
08:11Marleska and the troops arrived.
08:12Sanchez flew in by helicopter.
08:14The Guardia Civil and the National Police sealed off the beaches and set up a reception
08:17point at Terragil.
08:18Within hours and days, Spain sent back somewhere between 5,600 and 7,000 people through express
08:24procedures.
08:25Hundreds of minors were moved to military bases or placed in quarantine.
08:29Many migrants left on their own once they discovered there were no jobs waiting.
08:33The city declared a state of exception.
08:34President Vivas branded the whole thing an invasion, and Sanchez called it a serious crisis
08:39and swore to restore order.
08:41The fallout stretched for weeks.
08:42Morocco recalled its ambassador and summoned the Spanish envoy.
08:45Relations froze.
08:46The European Union scrambled to talk about cooperation with Rabat.
08:50In the long run, Spain reinforced its fences and its patrols, and the fate of the leftover
08:54children became a political football that never quite stopped bouncing.
08:57Smaller crossing attempts kept happening, but none reached that scale again, not until
09:012026.
09:02Line the two up and the contrast is brutal.
09:05In 2012, there were 8,000 to 12,000 people over two or three days.
09:092026 was 50,000 or more in under 48 hours.
09:12In 2021, the trigger was cold diplomatic payback.
09:15In 2026, it was a court ruling and a viral lie.
09:18In 2021, two people died.
09:20In 2026, up to 72.
09:21Both times Spain rolled out the army and rushed people back, but in 2026, the city was simply
09:27buried.
09:28The lesson Spain should have taken from 2021 was clear.
09:31Its African border could be switched on and off by someone else's mood.
09:34The lesson it apparently forgot was to be ready for the next time, and the neighbor holding
09:38that switch has never once changed.
09:42Morocco controls the border gate, and Spain pays the price.
09:45To understand Ceuta, you have to understand one uncomfortable fact.
09:49Spain does not really control its own border here.
09:52Morocco does.
09:53And Morocco runs that border like a business deal, one it can honor or ignore depending
09:57on how it feels about Madrid that week.
09:59On paper, the system looks tough.
10:01Rabat's Royal Gendarmerie, backed by auxiliary forces and a mountain of European Union money,
10:05guards the 12 to 18 kilometer landline around Ceuta and Malia.
10:09They watch it with tall watchtowers, drones, thermal cameras, and even facial recognition.
10:13Out at sea, officers routinely drag swimmers back around the Terragil breakwater and the
10:17Benzupir, either towing their boats or handing them life vests and pointing them home.
10:21In 2024 alone, Morocco blocked 18,645 attempts to reach the enclaves by sea.
10:28It has dismantled 332 human trafficking networks in recent years, and when it catches people,
10:33the punishment is blunt.
10:34Detention, fines, or a long bus ride out into the desert far from the coast.
10:38Then there are the hot returns.
10:39For years, anyone who jumped the land fence, and until very recently anyone who swam around
10:44it, could be handed straight back to Moroccan officers with no paperwork at all.
10:48Rabat calls this humanitarian management.
10:50In plain terms, it is a favor, and favors always come with a price tag.
10:54That price is written into two things.
10:55The first is a readmission agreement signed all the way back in 1992, which says Morocco
11:00will take back people who cross illegally into Spain.
11:03The second is not really a document at all, but a mood.
11:05The warm patch in relations after 2022, when Madrid formally recognized Moroccan control
11:10over the disputed Western Sahara.
11:12In return for guarding the gate, Rabat collects European aid, gas deals, and easier visas for
11:16its citizens.
11:17Spain gets a border that mostly holds.
11:19On its best days, that arrangement looks like a triumph.
11:22It helped drive a 42.6% drop in irregular arrivals to Spain across 2025.
11:27Cut the numbers almost in half in a single year.
11:30Not bad for a handshake.
11:31But a border that runs on favors can be switched off out of spite.
11:34And in July 2026, someone flip a switch.
11:37At the peak of the surge on the 30th and 31st of July, Moroccan gendarmes did something
11:42strange.
11:42They largely stepped back.
11:43The officers who normally tow swimmers home stood on the sand and watched tens of thousands
11:47stream past them into the sea.
11:49Analysts did not read this as an accident.
11:51They read it as a message.
11:52A bit of blackmail or payback tied to Spain recently warming up to Morocco's great rival
11:56Algeria and to a wider reshuffle of whom Madrid calls a friend.
11:59In this reading, the surge was less a failure of security and more a demonstration of power.
12:04It did not help the optics that Morocco's king was reportedly on holiday near Ceuta while
12:08the border melted down.
12:09A monarch relaxing by the coast while thousands of his young citizens swam toward Europe is
12:14not the picture of a partner trying very hard.
12:16Spain's public reaction was almost comically polite.
12:19Officials praised Morocco's cooperation on returns as exemplary.
12:22They thanked Rabat for taking people back.
12:24They insisted with straight faces that the relationship was still excellent.
12:28Sanchez himself made a point of stressing that, this time, the two governments were talking
12:32to each other, constant, fluid, reasonable.
12:34Notice the phrase he tacked on to the end unlike what happened in 2021.
12:37Because five years earlier when Morocco opened the gate on purpose, it also stopped answering
12:41the phone.
12:42This time Rabat kept talking even as its guards looked away.
12:45That is the tell.
12:45Morocco was not losing control of its border.
12:47It was choosing, minute by minute, exactly how much of it to enforce and letting Spain feel
12:52every inch of that choice.
12:53Behind the polite statements, trust took a real hit.
12:56The episode revived an old and ugly accusation that Morocco treats migration as a weapon,
13:01a tap it can open and close to squeeze concessions out of Madrid and Brussels.
13:04Both governments rushed out joint statements denying any orchestration, blaming faceless
13:08human trafficking mafias instead.
13:10Spain's foreign ministry kept calling relations excellent, but everyone in Ceuta could do the
13:15math.
13:15Spain moved fast to quietly undo the court ruling that started it all, resuming hot returns in
13:20coordination with Morocco and handing hundreds of Moroccan nationals straight back within hours.
13:24It also began dropping a 500-meter floating barrier at the Terragil breakwater, a line
13:29of buoys designed to count, on paper, as a physical wall, so the old fast returns could
13:33legally continue.
13:34When your border strategy depends on installing pool floats to satisfy a judge, you are improvising.
13:39There was, to be fair, some real cooperation to point to.
13:42By Friday evening, more than 48,000 people had already been sent back across the border,
13:46and Rabat publicly agreed to speed the rest of the repatriations along.
13:49Sanchez leaned on that number hard, reminding the country that, despite this one catastrophic weekend,
13:54irregular arrivals to Spain had still fallen by more than 30% under his watch.
13:59And he folded the dead into the diplomatic ledger too, insisting that the mafias who lured
14:04young men into the water deserved the harshest punishment of all.
14:07It was a careful message.
14:09Blame the smugglers, thank the neighbor, and never quite admit the neighbor had let it happen.
14:13To see why 2026 hit so hard, you have to watch how this relationship has swung back and forth
14:19for years.
14:19Spain's enclaves have been flashpoints since the 1990s, but the pattern is always the same.
14:25Morocco tightens the border when it is happy with Spain, and loosens it when it is not.
14:29In 2021 came the first great retaliation peak, when Rabat relaxed controls over the Ghali affair,
14:34and 8,000 to 12,000 people crossed in two days.
14:37Then in 2022 and 2023, after the Western Sahara deal, the mood flipped.
14:41Morocco tightened its grip hard, arrivals plunged, and mass hot returns resumed under that old 1992
14:47agreement. From 2024 into early 2026, the pressure was low and scattered.
14:52Around 800 swimmers in 2024, 2,647 land entries into Ceuta across 2025.
14:59Morocco intercepted roughly 78,600 attempts in 2024, and Spain's total irregular arrivals
15:05stayed comfortably below 40,000 to 50,000 a year.
15:08The system, on the surface, was working beautifully.
15:11Then 2026 tipped the whole thing over.
15:13In the first half of the year, irregular land entries into Ceuta were already climbing,
15:18up somewhere between 149 and 215% compared to the year before.
15:23The warning lights were flashing.
15:24Then three forces collided at once.
15:26One, the June court ruling killed the fast return that had kept swimmers in check.
15:31Two, social media turned every successful crossing into a free advertisement, complete with cheering.
15:36And three, Morocco's guards looked the other way at the worst possible moment.
15:39President Vaivas called the situation unsustainable.
15:42The European Union held emergency talks and floated the idea of temporary border checks,
15:47and Italy went ahead and suspended its Schengen arrangement with Spain.
15:50Madrid answered with the barrier, the returns and a promise of new laws,
15:54including a plan pushed by the opposition to extend the fast border ejection rules to every crossing point,
15:59land or sea.
16:00To keep an eye on it all, Interior Minister Marleska stayed behind in Ceuta for days.
16:05The uncomfortable truth for Spain is this.
16:07Its only land border with Africa has never truly been solved.
16:11It has been managed, rented really, through deals with Morocco and rapid returns.
16:15There is a deep tension baked into the whole setup, because Spain sits inside Europe's open Schengen zone,
16:21yet it keeps this gate shut using private bargains with a country outside it.
16:24When the deal wobbles, the law shifts, and a rumor catches fire all at the same time.
16:28The entire arrangement tips over in a single weekend.
16:31Effective control of this border, it turns out, has never really been about fences or drones or buoys.
16:36It has been about diplomatic trust, and trust is the one thing Spain cannot build, buy, or install.
16:41And Spain is far from the only European country learning that the hard way.
16:46Europe believed its migrant crisis was finally over.
16:50Ceuta grabbed the headlines, but zoomed out, and it is only one loud scene in a much larger,
16:55and much quieter, story.
16:56Europe's migrant crisis did not start in 2026.
17:00It exploded 10 years earlier, in 2015 and 2016, when more than a million people arrived in the worst years,
17:06most of them crossing the sea from North Africa and the Middle East.
17:09That was the wave that shook the continent, split its politics,
17:13and taught every government a hard lesson about open borders.
17:16Here is the part that surprises people.
17:18Since then, the trend has gone down, not up.
17:21By 2025, irregular border crossings had dropped sharply.
17:24And on 12 June 2026, just weeks before Ceuta blew up,
17:28the European Union switched on its new migration and asylum pact,
17:32a sweeping set of rules built to tighten the screws even further.
17:35So the strange backdrop to the Ceuta chaos is a Europe that truly believed the worst was behind it.
17:40So who still feels the pressure most?
17:41Start with Greece.
17:42It sits on the front line of the eastern Mediterranean route, the doorway from Turkey,
17:45and it carries the heaviest load per person in the entire block.
17:48In 2025, Greece logged 594 asylum applications for every 100,000 residents,
17:54a rate far above the European average.
17:56Arrivals on that route fell 23% last year.
17:59But the pressure never truly lifts,
18:01and Greece still hosts the largest share of irregular migrants and asylum seekers among the southern states.
18:06Tiny Cyprus, for its size, feels the squeeze just as hard.
18:09Then come Italy and Spain, the two countries that catch most of the sea arrivals.
18:13Italy guards the central Mediterranean route from Libya and Tunisia,
18:17handling around 66,000 arrivals in 2025,
18:20though its overall migrant numbers fell sharply that year.
18:23Spain guards the western route,
18:24and in 2025 it took the most first-time asylum applications in the entire European Union,
18:29around 141,000, or 21% of the whole bloc's total.
18:33Italy was close behind with 126,600, about 19%.
18:37These are the front doors of Europe, and they stay busy.
18:40France and Germany play a different role.
18:41They are the destinations, the places people are trying to reach,
18:44rather than the beaches where they land.
18:46Germany received 168,400 applications in 2025.
18:50France 151,500.
18:52Germany also carries the heaviest long-term weight of anyone,
18:54with a total refugee and asylum-seeker population sitting near 2.95 million,
18:59the highest in Europe.
19:00France, for its part, issues more removal orders than anyone,
19:03yet carries out relatively few of them.
19:05A gap we will come back to.
19:06And do not forget Poland, which logged the most border rejections of all,
19:09turning away close to 30,000 people in a single year.
19:12Now here is the headline number that Sayuda made everyone forget.
19:15Across the whole European Union,
19:17total asylum applications fell 27% in 2025,
19:20down to 669,400.
19:22The faces changed too.
19:24The top nationality is no longer Syrian or Afghan,
19:26but Venezuelan, with 89,500 applications,
19:29followed by Afghans and Syrians.
19:31The map of who is coming,
19:32and from where keeps shifting under everyone's feet.
19:34None of this has been painless.
19:36A decade of arrivals has strained reception systems to breaking point,
19:39stuffed asylum offices with years-long backlogs,
19:42and turned integration into a permanent political fight in almost every capital.
19:46It has fed the rise of hard-right parties from France to Germany to Italy,
19:49each promising to slam the door for good.
19:51The steady fall in numbers since the 2023 peak owes a lot to blunt bargains,
19:55above all the money and border deals struck with Turkey,
19:58and more recently Tunisia,
19:59that keep people penned up long before they ever reach a European beach.
20:02Cheaper than fences, and far less visible.
20:05So what is Europe doing to hold all this back?
20:07Quite a lot as it turns out, and it comes in four big pieces.
20:10The first piece is deals with other countries.
20:12Europe has quietly learned that the cheapest border is the one on someone else's soil.
20:16Partnerships with Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Turkey
20:19have choked off departures before boats ever launch.
20:21Voluntary returns from Tunisia and North Africa jump,
20:24with more than 35,800 assisted returns in 2025 alone.
20:28Joint patrols and shared surveillance did the rest.
20:30It is the exact same logic Spain uses with Morocco,
20:33just stretched across a whole continent,
20:35and it carries the exact same weakness.
20:37It only works while the partner is willing.
20:39Second piece is the borders themselves,
20:41and here Europe has gone high-tech.
20:42A new entry and exit system started rolling out in October 2025,
20:46logging every non-European traveler who comes and goes.
20:48A travel permission scheme and a rebuilt fingerprint database are due by the middle of 2026.
20:53From now on, every irregular arrival gets run through mandatory checks on identity,
20:57security, health and vulnerability.
20:59The days of slipping through unrecorded are closing fast.
21:01The third piece is the big one, the pact on migration and asylum,
21:04in full force since June 2026.
21:06This is the rulebook Europe spent years fighting over.
21:09It forces fast screening at the border,
21:10quick procedures for weak claims and anyone flagged as a risk,
21:13and speedier deportations for those who fail.
21:15Its centerpiece is a solidarity mechanism,
21:17polite phrase for making every member state share the load,
21:20whether by taking in some people, sending money, or lending staff.
21:23It sets clearer rules on safe third countries and family reunification,
21:27and it even pushes the idea of return hubs,
21:29holding centers for rejected asylum seekers parked outside the block entirely.
21:33On top of all that, in January 2026, the union added a five-year strategy,
21:37aimed squarely at smashing smuggling networks with better data and digital tools.
21:41Add it all together, and the results are real, if fragile.
21:44Irregular crossings fell 26% in 2025 to 177,766 detections,
21:50the lowest count since 2021.
21:52But the wins come with a running cost that no chart likes to show.
21:55People still drown in the Mediterranean every single month.
21:57Rights groups warn that harder borders simply shove desperate travelers onto deadlier, lonelier routes.
22:02The smaller states buckle under numbers far too big for them,
22:05while the richer ones argue endlessly over who should carry the human weight.
22:09Europe now sells itself a tidy slogan for all this, fair and firm.
22:12The firm part is easy to see.
22:14The fair part is still very much up for debate.
22:16Thanks for staying tuned.
22:17To enjoy more of such content, be sure to click on the card showing on the screen.
22:25Rachel!
22:26Rachel!
22:27R
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