Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez described the mass crossing of migrants into Ceuta from Morocco as a violation of Spain’s territorial integrity and pledged to use all the levers of the state to restore security in the enclave.
Some 60,000 people entered the autonomous city irregularly, according to data from the Ceuta government. Sánchez framed the episode in the language of sovereignty and national defense rather than migration management, calling it an organized challenge against the Spanish border.
Despite using language more associated with security threats than with irregular migration, Sánchez stopped short of blaming Morocco for the crossings. He attributed full responsibility to criminal networks trafficking in human beings and publicly thanked Moroccan authorities for halting arrivals and speeding up repatriations.
His official explanation was that those networks had spread a self-interested reading of a recent Supreme Court ruling on the return of migrants who cross the border by swimming, and that the misreading had spread rapidly.
The framing carried significance. The European Union defines hybrid threats as coordinated activities with hostile intent to weaken a state through pressure instruments including irregular migration. NATO used that label in 2021 to describe Belarus’s organized use of migrants against Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. Sánchez did not apply either term.
Spain’s military and security response reflected the gravity the government attached to the event. Armed forces were mobilized to support the Civil Guard, police and Civil Guard deployments were increased, maritime and aerial assets were reinforced, and the government announced the installation of buoys along the breakwater to create a physical barrier compatible with the Supreme Court’s doctrine on returns.
Spain’s 2025 National Security Annual Report, approved by the National Security Council, had already noted a gradual increase in entries through Ceuta’s perimeter. It warned that pressure on Ceuta and Melilla had been notably increased by swimmers attempting to cross by sea at serious risk to their lives.
The same report stated that control of mass crossings depended in large part on perimeter deployment by Morocco’s Royal Gendarmerie and armed forces, which it said had maintained quite rigorous frontier control in recent years. Sánchez acknowledged that the new episode broke a positive trend in reducing illegal entries.
Diplomatic sources cited by this newspaper admitted there had been permissiveness on Morocco’s part. Intelligence sources cited by El País reached the same conclusion.
Morocco claims sovereignty over Ceuta and Melilla, and the border has long served as a barometer of the bilateral relationship. Sánchez’s response reflected the difficult balance his government is attempting to maintain with Rabat while insisting that Spain’s frontier was breached.
