Parallels abound between a recent migrant crisis in a Spanish border town and the chaotic scenes witnessed at America’s own southern border during the Biden administration’s self-inflicted border disaster. In a matter of days, 60,000 migrants illegally entered the Spanish exclave of Ceuta (population 84,000), overwhelming local systems and resulting in 57 deaths.
The crossing chaos was motivated in part by a left-wing government’s ill-advised talk of amnesty and its inattention to border security. Ceuta’s secluded situation — the city is an exclave of Spain on the Moroccan coast, directly south of Gibraltar — certainly hampered the Spanish response. But Spain’s border crisis results from a more complex picture, having less to do with immigration policy per se than a far-reaching web of geopolitical intrigue.
“Do tens of thousands of people spontaneously decide, all by themselves, to rush a fenced border?” asked National Review’s Jim Geraghty. “No, they do not.” On the contrary, multiple participants say they were encouraged to cross into Spanish territory by Moroccan police or social media posts. Many of the migrants have already left Ceuta (since there was nothing for them to do there), but the flash mob “demonstrated [Morocco’s] ability to overrun Spanish territory at will,” one commentator suggested, showing the vulnerabilities of Spain’s tiny holdings on Moroccan shores.
Morocco, for its part, denied involvement, blaming the migrant crossing on “misinformation” spread by human traffickers.
But the fraught history between Europe’s and Africa’s closest neighbors points to deeper tensions. Following Morocco’s independence in 1956, the fledgling kingdom attacked Spanish territorial holdings in North Africa, gradually forcing Spain out of Ifni, Cape Juby, and all of Western Sahara. As recently as 2002, Morocco made an abortive attempt to forcibly capture Spanish territory at Isla Perejil on the North African coast.
However, the conflict stretches back much further than modern Morocco. In 711, during the initial wave of Islamic expansion, Berber forces crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and never left. Within a century, Muslim kingdoms ruled nearly all of Spain, and it took almost seven centuries for the Christian kingdoms in Spain to fight the invaders back. The final Muslim kingdom in Spain (Granada) did not fall until 1492, thus clearing the way for Spain’s united rulers to authorize the first exploratory voyage of Christopher Columbus.
At this point, Spain’s ambitions for conquest were only beginning, and it soon established an international empire, including many holdings on the African coast. The city of Ceuta had become a Portuguese outpost in 1415, but its ownership was transferred to Spain when the Spanish kings briefly acquired control of Portugal in 1580.
Now that the era of colonial empires is long past, Moroccan national sentiment is firmly fixed on wrestling away Spain’s remaining outposts in North Africa.
This historical background reveals underlying tensions, but it does not show a catalyst for the recent migrant crisis. For that, we must widen the aperture of our search beyond Spain and Morocco to include neighboring Algeria.
As the two greatest powers in northwest Africa, Morocco and Algeria see each other as natural rivals, and their relations have recently grown quite bitter. Their land border has been closed since 1994, and Algeria formally cut off diplomatic relations in 2021.
The two African nations also compete for the approval of Spain. Spain not only has a larger economy and is a more developed European nation, it also occupies an important geographic position across the Strait of Gibraltar. Spain faces Morocco just as England faces France, across a narrow but important channel, along hundreds of miles of coastline. Algeria is slightly further away, but Spain and Algeria also face one another for hundreds of miles across an important maritime trade route. Just like England in the Channel, Spain also holds island outposts near both Morocco and Algeria.
In 2022, Spain reversed its decades-long policy of official neutrality over the ownership of Western Sahara to back Morocco’s claims. This angered Algeria, which also lays claim to the desert coastline. However, on July 20, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez visited Algiers, where he declared his intention to mend ties and deepen relations between the two countries, angering Morocco.
For Moroccan migrants crossing the Spanish border at Ceuta this week, this recent diplomatic tiff is the most immediate catalyst.
However, to see the full web, we must widen the aperture even further. For the tensions between Morocco and Algeria have prompted both countries to engage in something of an arms race, and the fastest way for mid-tier powers to acquire advanced weapons is to buy them from other countries.
Beginning in 2021, Morocco purchased multiple air defense systems from Israel and 18 HIMARS rocket launchers from the United States, along with other equipment. Morocco was one of four Muslim nations to join the Abraham Accords with Israel during Trump’s first term as president. Algeria responded by doubling its military budget in 2023, with plans to buy fighters, bombers, and air defenses from Russia and military drones from China and Turkey.
Readers will be sure to notice the familiar fault lines of friends and enemies (with Turkey, a NATO member, scandalously siding with America’s rivals and against Israel). Thus, the Morocco-Algeria rivalry in northwest Africa is not just a local affair but a local installment of the global fault lines between pro-American and pro-Russian powers. The Cold War never dies.
Perhaps even more shocking than Asian and Muslim Turkey’s betrayal is the apparent betrayal of European Spain, which is now aligning itself against America in the war with Iran and for Algeria, a vehement opponent of Israel. The U.S. government has taken this fact into account, sending more than $110 million in foreign aid to Morocco over the last three years. Language in the most recent State Department appropriations bill noted that “the Spanish-administered cities of Ceuta and Melilla are located in Moroccan territory and remain the subject of Morocco’s longstanding claim.” Even acknowledging Morocco’s claim is almost akin to backing it.
Meanwhile, Spain’s socialist government — exuberantly pursuing the parasitic Red-Green Alliance — continues to inflict all its own wounds. In February, the Sanchez government proposed amnesty for illegal immigrants, the seventh such amnesty Spain has offered in 40 years. A basic principle of government policymaking is, when you reward certain behavior, you get more of it. Sanchez estimated he would grant amnesty to half a million immigrants, but more than 1.3 million applied, and border crossings like that in Ceuta illustrate how such a policy will attract more illegal immigrants.
But Spain’s unwise amnesty imposes a cost for the rest of Europe, since Spanish citizens can travel to or work in 28 other countries. Thus, more than 20 EU member states have called for an emergency meeting to address Spain’s poor border security and prostrate immigration enforcement. Meanwhile, Spain is receiving no sympathy from its newfound Islamic friends, who are simply tickled to see another European country overrun with the invaders they once expelled.
Let us not overlook the irony that Spain’s migrant predicament has revealed shifting historical alliances. Europe and America once stood as a cohesive bloc of Western powers against a cohesive bloc of Islamic ones. But now, Spain’s socialist government has adopted an anti-Western perspective that spoils the cooperation of the EU and NATO and leads it to pick new friends who hate America. Meanwhile, internal rivalries within the Muslim world have prompted nations like Morocco to seek better relations with their former adversaries.
Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about the Ceuta border crossings spread like gangrene, with 173 posts from 119 X accounts reaching an estimated 103 million people in 72 hours. While the conspiracy theory is ridiculous on its face, the contest between Morocco and Spain is, in part, about Israel. With historical alliances called into question, Americans must seriously consider, in the Spain-Morocco controversy, whose side we are actually on.