Spain’s southern border erupted into absolute chaos Thursday as thousands of migrants pushed into Ceuta from neighboring Morocco.

Video from the scene shows huge groups moving through the Spanish territory, crowding roads, circling barriers, and spilling into nearby areas with no visible force in the immediate frame capable of stopping them.

Ceuta is Spanish soil on the North African coast. Once migrants cross into the enclave, they have entered both Spain and the European Union.

The first video captures the sheer scale of the surge:

This was not a handful of people slipping through a weak point in the dark.

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It was a mass movement in broad daylight, with the border visibly overwhelmed and migrants moving onto local roads.

The Associated Press confirmed that thousands streamed into Ceuta from Morocco on Thursday. The outlet reported that footage showed crowds, mainly Moroccans, moving around the breakwaters at Tarajal beach and onto local roads.

Most appeared to be young men, though women and children were also present.

Ceuta’s regional president, Juan Jesús Vivas, called on Spain’s national government to declare a national emergency, send additional police, and deploy the army to the frontier. He said the reinforcements were needed to protect the border and the public.

Reception centers were already overwhelmed before Thursday’s mass breach, with hundreds sleeping outside. The latest rush recalled the May 2021 crisis, when more than 8,000 migrants entered Ceuta in two days.

A second clip shows how exposed the border appeared as the flow continued:

The images are astonishing, but the crisis had been building for days.

On Wednesday, Vivas said more than 1,500 migrants, including adults and minors, had reached Ceuta by sea in just a few days. Many swam around the Tarajal breakwaters from Morocco, forcing the Spanish Civil Guard, maritime rescuers, and the Red Cross to retrieve people from the water.

Spain’s interior minister called the situation “extraordinary” and “exceptional,” but insisted the government could handle it with the resources already deployed.

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Thursday’s scenes told a different story.

The supplied Telegram compilation shows a mass of young men packed around an open gate and another man climbing the exterior of a nearby residential building.

The footage stops short of showing him enter the building. Even so, the scene captures the pressure spilling beyond the frontier and into the surrounding neighborhood.

Cadena SER reported that thousands of young Moroccans arrived Thursday at the frontier between Castillejos, Morocco, and Ceuta. Hundreds crossed protective barriers that were not guarded at that moment, according to the Spanish report, while Moroccan auxiliary forces withdrew as the crowd approached.

Spain and Morocco later announced that they would intensify coordination and move as quickly as possible to return those who entered Ceuta illegally. Spain’s interior ministry also blamed human-trafficking networks for exploiting a recent court ruling in order to encourage more illegal crossings.

Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska is expected to travel urgently to Ceuta on Friday. Yet Madrid rejected Vivas’s request for a national-emergency declaration, arguing that Spain’s civil-protection law does not classify migration flows as the kind of national disaster covered by that mechanism.

That legal explanation will do little to reassure residents watching thousands of people pour across a frontier that visibly failed.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has made Spain the great European holdout on mass migration, repeatedly defending policies that are far more permissive than those now adopted by many neighboring countries.

The result is no longer an abstract debate in Madrid or Brussels. It is playing out at the gates of Ceuta, on the roads beyond them, and outside overwhelmed reception centers.

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A border that cannot stop a mass crossing is not a functioning border.

Spain now has a choice: restore control quickly, or show every smuggler and would-be migrant watching these images that the route is open.

This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.

 

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