Violence breaks out in Ceuta as migrant crisis continues

A month after tens of thousands of migrants entered the city of Ceuta, a Spanish exclave in North Africa, there have been outbreaks of violence as tensions mount between locals and foreign arrivals.

The Spanish government has been accused by opposition parties of struggling to manage the crisis effectively.

Ceuta's residents have complained of feeling unsafe on the streets, as well as expressing concerns about the burden being placed on public services.

At least 72,000 migrants crossed from Morocco into Ceuta on 30 and 31 July. Most swam around a border fence and at least 100 people died during the mass crossing, according to figures from Ceuta's mayor.

The vast majority of the migrants returned to Morocco within hours of their arrival, but several thousand remain in Ceuta, many of them children, and most are sleeping rough on beaches or streets.

Anti-migrant demonstrations earlier this month were largely peaceful, but in recent days they have become increasingly violent.

On Thursday, several dozen locals prevented Red Cross personnel from distributing food and water to the migrants. Afterwards, some set fire to migrant camps on Trampolín beach, the main site where they have been sleeping, and there were also clashes with the police.

Those incidents came hours after the arrest of 12 migrants who were accused of throwing stones at a military vehicle, breaking its windows and injuring the four men inside. That same morning there were reports of vigilante groups pursuing migrants through the streets.

Journalists and film crews have also reported being threatened.

"This is a city which has been under pressure, […] which has the right to normality," the mayor of the exclave, the conservative Juan Jesús Vivas, told Antena 3 television.

"The dignity of Spain is a stake right now in Ceuta," he said.

The socialist-led government of Pedro Sánchez has appealed for calm and accused Vivas's People's Party (PP) and the far-right Vox of stoking the tensions.

José María Figaredo, a member of Congress for Vox, is being investigated for a possible hate crime after saying, soon after the migrants' arrival, that they should be "hunted down, one by one".

Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska told a congressional committee: "We have heard during these weeks rhetoric and comments that contribute to the stigmatisation of immigrants and which feed social division at a moment when what we need is responsibility and statesmanship."

Javier Celaya, who represents Ceuta in Congress for the PP, accused the government of treating "the invaders as victims when the real victims are us, the people of Ceuta".

On Friday, all the parties in the Ceuta local assembly signed a declaration condemning violence.

Earlier this week, the government centralised management of the situation, overriding the local authority, after criticism that it had been slow to respond.

Defence Minister Margarita Robles also apologised to those in Ceuta who "may have felt, or who even still feel, abandoned or not sufficiently cared", as the government unveiled plans to overhaul the country's immigration laws.

Much of the recent ill-feeling in the city appears to be driven by government plans to move migrants into existing public buildings, such as sports centres, in order to be able to process their legal status in an orderly way and return those not eligible for asylum to Morocco.

Many local people, and Vivas, oppose this initiative, due to concerns that it will move the migrants closer to residential areas.

The government is also facing questions about who was behind the mass migrant crossing.

Politicians on the right and the far left have accused Morocco of involvement, pointing to its alleged use of the border with Spain in the past to exert political pressure.

Sánchez and his Socialist Party instead blame people traffickers, insisting that Rabat is a reliable partner which facilitated the immediate return of most of the arrivals.

Nonetheless, the crisis has placed the sovereignty of Ceuta, and its fellow autonomous city Melilla, under the spotlight.

Morocco has maintained a longstanding claim to the territories, which it has reiterated in recent weeks.

Spain's Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares said he "roundly rejected" such comments by Morocco.

"I don't speak about, nor have I spoken about, nor are we going to speak about Spain's territorial integrity with Morocco or with anyone else," he told the congressional committee.

Related topics

More on this story