The avalanche of migrants that entered Ceuta from Morocco on July 30 was not a surprise. Perhaps the final number, about 80,000 people, greatly exceeded the incident’s forecasts, but not the fact that there were movements to mobilize a crowd of people to storm the Spanish border by sea that day. There was prior information. And this is how the CNI communicated it to the Government Delegation in Ceuta in a meeting held on the 29th.
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This is the main conclusion drawn yesterday from the extraordinary appearance of the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, in Congress, where a narrative of the events was presented that exposes the management of the Interior Minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, because there was an explicit alert the day before the assault and the border was not fortified for the occasion – perimeter control is the exclusive responsibility of his department -. Furthermore, Robles also exposed Marlaska’s version of events, as when giving explanations he continues to excuse himself by saying there was no prior information from the Spanish intelligence services.
In a striking scene, the Interior Minister replied to his colleague from the press conference after the Council of Ministers while Robles continued giving her version of events in the Defense Commission of Congress. Marlaska insisted on the argument that “there was no report that foresaw that on July 30 what finally happened would occur.” “Can anyone understand that if something similar to what happened on July 30, 2026, had been glimpsed, considering what happened on May 17 and 18, 2021, something, simply something similar, not to what happened on July 30 this year, but to 2021, when 10,000 people entered, it would not have been elevated to the highest levels to take extraordinary and exceptional measures if necessary?” he argued.
Seeing the clash with Robles, he tried to avoid it by defending the “high professionalism” of the intelligence services and praising that they have been “fully employed.” To which he added: “I am convinced that everyone acted correctly.”
For its part, the Government Delegation in Ceuta replied yesterday that it did not receive any “report” warning of what was going to happen on the 30th, but it does admit that it received daily information about the increase in arrivals by sea.
The contradiction between the accounts of the two socialist ministers has been dragging on throughout the Ceuta crisis, but unlike what has happened in previous weeks, Robles gave data and put dates to the alerts yesterday. She listed two meetings and the warning of an explicit threat that was brewing. Details that question Marlaska.
The first meeting described by Robles took place on July 27: there is a meeting of the president of the autonomous city, Juan Jesús Vivas; the Government delegate, Miguel Ángel Pérez Triano; and the CNI in which the agents “present the situation,” which basically is that social networks encourage an interpretation that due to a Supreme Court ruling, Spain cannot hot deport those who enter Ceuta by swimming; and that is why there are more entries like this.
Two days later, on July 29, a day before the massive entry, a second and most compromising meeting for Marlaska took place. In that meeting, Robles explained, the intelligence agents “transferred and reported to the Government Delegation the call for the next day, precisely to be able to enter by swimming taking advantage of a celebration in the neighboring country.” That celebration is the Throne Day, which commemorates the ascent of Mohamed VI as head of state in 1999. And what happened was that first thousands of people and then up to a total of 80,000 entered throughout the day without opposition in Ceuta. There is no record of any special security device to prevent an avalanche.
But was there a written report from the CNI warning of the situation? Robles did not want to answer this clearly, but from her words it can be interpreted that the intelligence agents’ warnings were verbal, as she said “there is no need to go to handwritten reports from the intelligence service,” since the CNI operates in “many ways”. In any case, she emphasized that “it was known, public and notorious in Ceuta that people were entering by swimming” due to that interpretation encouraged by social networks. That this “use” was “increasing” was known, she concluded, “without the need for reports or with reports from someone that are secret.”
Hence the conclusion from the public explanations of the Minister of Defense is that the information flowed to those responsible for monitoring and securing the border, which is the Ministry of the Interior and the Civil Guard. That the CNI’s work is secret, Robles stated, “cannot be an obstacle” to saying that military and Intelligence “performed the work that was and is competently required of them and shared and analyzed it with the State Security Forces and the Government Delegation staff.”
On July 30, the day of the massive assault on the border, the front page of EL MUNDO had a headline saying “There are 3,000 [migrants] in Morocco waiting to cross swimming” to Ceuta. The report signed by Andros Lozano, published on the website and in print hours before the massive entry, includes testimonies from Civil Guards in Ceuta who say they are overwhelmed because “hundreds are arriving every day.” “We know there are thousands more there,” says one of those agents about the rise of swimmers leaving from Morocco.
One of the Moroccan swimmers interviewed in this report is asked if he has seen many people waiting to cross. His answer leaves no doubt: “I can’t tell you how many, but there are people from all parts of Morocco. Casablanca, Nador, Rabat. 2,000, 3,000 people… I would say more than 3,000 people are waiting on the beaches of Morocco to cross swimming.”
A phrase from this EL MUNDO report shows that in Ceuta this danger was known: “Ceuta is experiencing a migration crisis increasingly reminiscent of May 2021, when around 14,000 people crossed on foot and by sea from Morocco in just four days.”
The threat was not only being exposed in the authorities’ meetings held on the 27th and 29th in Ceuta. It was also already on the front pages of newspapers.
Back to Robles, the minister explained yesterday that the CNI has 25 agents with secret assignments who carry out their mission in Ceuta. This is the first time such information has been revealed. Their job is to monitor “daily” the situation from all possible angles, including destabilization through hybrid threats.
On the other hand, the minister’s appearance left a request for “apologies” to the people of Ceuta who feel “abandoned” and a warning to Morocco: “Ceuta and Melilla are Spanish and untouchable.”
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