Italian
One week after the mass crossing at the border, the death toll is nearing one hundred and hundreds of Moroccan families are still waiting for news. Behind the humanitarian emergency, a political crisis that exposes the fragilities of the euromediterranean border control system
MOROCCO. On the Moroccan side of the border with Ceuta, the Spanish enclave on African soil, hundreds of people have been gathering for days, showing worn photographs to anyone who passes by. They are looking for a face, news, a sign of life. It is the same patch of land that a week ago was in the spotlight of the whole world for the crossing of about 72,000 people in just a few hours, one of the most significant episodes in the recent history of migration to Europe.
The official toll, provided by local authorities, speaks of at least 88 victims in Ceuta and another 11 in Moroccan territory, with dozens missing. These numbers, in their administrative sterility, struggle to convey the magnitude of what has happened: entire families who have been guarding the crossing for days, like Hadijja, who arrived from Tangier in search of her twenty-three-year-old son, of whom she has had no news since the weekend. “He didn’t tell me he wanted to cross,” she recounts. “It’s a tragedy.”
A record repatriation, in record time
The Spanish Government has announced that around 70,000 of the people who entered Ceuta in recent days have already been sent back to Morocco, in a repatriation operation conducted in close coordination with Rabat and completed within 48 hours. This speed alone reflects the scale of the machinery set in motion by Madrid to contain a crisis that threatened to overwhelm the Government of Pedro Sánchez, already under pressure from calls to suspend Spain from the Schengen area.
According to Spanish estimates, around 2,000 people remain in Ceuta, including at least 862 unaccompanied minors registered as such. This is where the most delicate and darkest part of the entire situation is concentrated. UNICEF Spain has raised the alarm about an unspecified number of children who may still be wandering the streets of the city without any protection. “We don’t know how many are missing,” said Susana Hidalgo, a migration expert from the organization, to public television TVE, describing a “tremendously difficult” situation. On the other side of the border, she added, “there are families searching for their children, while in Ceuta there are ten and twelve-year-old children asking for a phone to tell their mother that they are okay.”
The accelerated repatriation procedures have raised more than one concern among Spanish NGOs, which report the concrete risk that individuals potentially entitled to international protection rights have been sent back to Morocco before being able to apply for asylum — a violation, if confirmed, that is not insignificant in relation to the obligations Spain has undertaken at the European and international levels. Making the situation even more delicate is a video, released on Tuesday by Spanish media, showing a twelve-year-old boy pleading in tears with a soldier not to send him back to Morocco: the operation, which was taking place just a few meters from the border, was only interrupted after the intervention of some witnesses who pointed out that Spanish law prohibits the expulsion of unaccompanied minors. An isolated incident, perhaps, but symptomatic of how the administrative machine, under pressure from overwhelming numbers, can lose sight of the most basic guarantees.
The unanswered question: who triggered all of this?
Aside from the management of the emergency, the most contentious political issue concerns the causes of the surge. For days, suspicion has been growing on the Spanish side that Morocco has at least tolerated, if not encouraged, the mass crossing. This is an explicit accusation from Juan Jesús Vivas, the long-serving President of Ceuta: “There was a feeling that this, if not orchestrated, was at least encouraged or allowed by Morocco.” From Rabat, a senior official firmly rejected the insinuation in an interview with the France Presse agency, describing it as a “simplistic” interpretation of the phenomenon: “At a certain point, the Moroccan law enforcement could no longer contain the migrants because the numbers were too large” and “the pull effect was very strong.” As for the hypothesis that Spain could have stopped the wave by force, the same official dismisses the idea as impractical.
The Moroccan Ministry of the Interior, in a statement released on Sunday, preferred to point the finger at “the exploitation of the digital sphere” and “the spread of misinformation.” This interpretation is at least partially confirmed by sources from Spanish intelligence: the rush to the border would be based on a rumor that circulated rapidly on social networks following a ruling by the Spanish Supreme Court stating that migrants arriving by sea could not be summarily expelled. A distorted piece of content, shared on TikTok, Facebook, and WhatsApp, which led tens of thousands of people to believe that Morocco was allowing free passage.
Here, however, the versions diverge sharply, and the divergence is not a detail. The Moroccan official claims that Rabat had warned Madrid weeks in advance: “We started to communicate with the Spanish side around July 22-23, when the networks began to talk about it. We had explained that this ruling would create a problem. The problem, in fact, has arisen.” A reconstruction that the Spanish Minister for Migration, Elma Saiz, has categorically rejected: “At no time was there any evidence, any report that alerted us to the magnitude of this unprecedented event.”
It is an exchange of accusations that, beyond direct responsibilities, captures a broader problem: the management of the external borders of the European Union continues to largely depend on the cooperation — variable, and sometimes instrumental — of third transit countries. When that cooperation falters, or is perceived as a tool of political pressure, the consequences fall on those with the least say: the migrants themselves, and in this case particularly the minors.
Between those who return and those who stay
Between those who voluntarily throw in the towel and those who are forcibly brought back, between those who reunite with their loved ones and those who continue to wait — this is where the real human cost of a crisis is measured. In Fnideq, among those who are still waiting, a fragile hope prevails, fueled by the few happy-ending stories that circulate from mouth to mouth.
As long as the official toll of the dead and missing remains a moving figure, the real question — about who allowed all this to happen, and who should be held accountable — will continue to hang in the air just like the silent phones of those still waiting for a call.
