Ceuta's president says Morocco is harassing the city; Sánchez says Spain "should prepare better"

Ceuta's president wants the EU to confront Morocco. Brussels Signal reports Juan Jesús Vivas urging the EU to act over what its headline puts in quotation marks — 'harassment' of the city — and what its opening sentence states flat, as fact, with Morocco as the actor. It attaches no figure to the "migration surges" it says have strained security and public services.

Spain's prime minister blames the information, not Morocco. Público quotes Pedro Sánchez saying Spain "se deve preparar melhor" for crises like Ceuta, and insisting the information authorities held at the end of July "não permitia antecipar uma entrada maciça de migrantes em Ceuta". He names no Moroccan actor. No critic answers him in the text.

A third report skips the cause entirely. Observador carries the consequence: three polls, the PSOE falling, Vox rising, the PP ahead but unable to govern alone. It prints no percentage from any of the three.

Not settled. How many people crossed: none of the three gives a number, and none quotes anyone who crossed. What Morocco says: one report names it as acting, none carries a Moroccan voice or a denial. What the polls found: three are cited, none is named, no figure is printed from any of them.

What this is about. Ceuta is a Spanish city on the North African coast, across the Strait of Gibraltar from mainland Spain, and this story is about who gets blamed after large numbers of people crossed its land border on foot.

How it got here. Spain has governed Ceuta for centuries and also holds Melilla, a second city further east along the same coast. Morocco, independent since 1956, claims both; Spain rejects the claim. Because Spain is an EU member state, the fences around the two cities are the European Union's only land borders with Africa — anyone who gets over one is standing on EU soil, and what happens next is decided under Spanish and EU law, not Moroccan.

Spain and the Union have long leaned on Moroccan policing of that frontier, paid for in part with EU money, and that cooperation has risen and fallen with relations between Madrid and Rabat. In May 2021 thousands crossed into Ceuta in two days while Moroccan controls eased, during a quarrel over Spain's hospital treatment of the leader of the Polisario Front; Spanish politicians called it deliberate pressure, Morocco denied it. Relations were repaired in March 2022, when Pedro Sánchez endorsed Morocco's autonomy plan for Western Sahara, the territory Morocco controls and Polisario contests.

It happened again this month. Reports we carried on 6 and 7 September put the crossing at 80,000 people in two days (Euractiv, ABC) and "unos 70.000" (El País), and Spanish papers could not agree on a word for it — El Mundo wrote thousands, ABC wrote "la invasión".

Who is in it. Juan Jesús Vivas runs Ceuta's city government for the centre-right PP. Sánchez, of the PSOE, has been prime minister since 2018 and governs in a minority: the PP won more seats in July 2023 and he was invested that November with regional and nationalist support. Vox, which sits with Patriots for Europe in the European Parliament, campaigns on migration. Morocco is named by one report and speaks in none.

What is at stake. Whether this is treated as a foreign quarrel with Rabat, which would fall to the European Commission, or as a Spanish failure to prepare, which falls to Sánchez — with a general election due in 2027.