“If I become Prime Minister, I will turn Spain, as other European states already have, into a welcoming country,” promised the current head of government, Pedro Sánchez, in April 2016, when the refugee crisis affecting the continent was dominating the political agenda. However, those words are far from the thesis presented yesterday by his Foreign Minister, José Manuel Albares, who stated that Madrid and Rabat, with “fluid dialogue,” are “committed” to ensuring that “even the last person who has entered Spain irregularly returns to Morocco.”
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He said this from Ceuta, after on July 30th 80,000 people crossed the border irregularly and, according to the autonomous government, up to 11,000 may still be there. However, the message was not limited to this exceptional situation, as Albares emphasized: “Those who enter Ceuta and Melilla irregularly should know, because Spain and Morocco work together on this, that they will be returned. They will not be able to reach the Peninsula, nor the European continent, nor stay indefinitely in Ceuta or Melilla.”
Although he assured that the law will be enforced, the minister made this statement without any qualification, without appealing to possible exceptions due to the circumstances of each person who enters Spain irregularly. And yesterday, the Spanish Embassy in Morocco insisted on its social media: “Entering Ceuta and Melilla irregularly does not give the right to remain in Spain or to access the rest of Europe. Any information to the contrary is false.” The message was also published in English, French, and Arabic.
The discourse is far from the one that led Sánchez, newly arrived at La Moncloa, to welcome the Aquarius ship, which carried 600 migrants and was refused entry by Italy. It also clashes with what he used to defend during the migration crises in recent years in the Canary Islands: in October 2024, with irregular arrivals to the archipelago at their peak, Sánchez stated in Congress that “welcoming those who come from abroad seeking a better life” is “a duty imposed by our history,” “a matter of respecting […] international law,” and “an essential step to guarantee the future prosperity of our economy.”
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It is not necessary to go back that far. Albares’ words yesterday, which align with messages conveyed by other government members regarding this crisis, also do not fully match the discourse the government has been championing in recent months on migration, which is a key pillar of its roadmap. The extraordinary regularization promoted last January and presented as one of the major measures of this legislature is far from the idea the minister would have conveyed yesterday to the president of Ceuta, Juan Jesús Vivas, according to the latter’s statement: “The best way to stop it [the possibility of the avalanche repeating] is for everyone to lose the expectation that coming to Ceuta solves what they intend. No papers, no asylum. The only solution: return to Morocco. The minister shares this, he has told us.”
The government’s insistence in recent days on its intention that those who have entered Ceuta return to Morocco, emphasizing that they will not be able to go to Spain or the continent, is also in some way a message aimed at the European Union. A commitment to “strengthen” what Albares called yesterday “the most complex and special border in the world; the border of Europe with Africa.” All this after 22 countries pointed to the immigrant regularization promoted by the government as a policy that weakens the defense of community borders—they referred to a possible pull effect. “Ceuta and Melilla absolutely guarantee the integrity of the Schengen area,” Albares claimed yesterday, in connection with the border controls Italy resumed for Spanish travelers after the massive entry of migrants into Ceuta—it did so alleging the possibility that they might reach the transalpine country, a point the government insists on denying.
Despite the Spanish government’s migration discourse moving closer to that of European countries—with the major exception of the deportation centers that Italy defends and Sánchez rejects—Albares did keep alive the clash with Giorgia Meloni‘s cabinet yesterday, accusing it of speaking with “lightness and frivolity” regarding the Ceuta situation. The government also insisted on the confrontation with the opposition bench: the Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, attacked the coalition governments of PP and Vox for their migration theses; also the Minister of Childhood, Sira Rego, censured the rejection by Santiago Abascal‘s party of funds to manage the emergency; and the Ministry of Equality called for an investigation into Vox deputy José María Figaredo for his call to “hunt” migrants. Thus, despite the discursive shift on immigration, confrontation with the right remains part of the government’s roadmap.
