Ceuta cares for 1,100 migrant minors, twelve times the number the law sets for a migration emergency

A neighbourhood becomes a frontline

Six days after as many as 80,000 people crossed the border from Morocco into Ceuta, the El Príncipe neighbourhood has been transformed. Residents have mobilised to manage an overwhelming influx: women scrub large cooking pots in doorways, migrants queue outside garages to receive food and clothing, and men distribute papers so dozens of children without parents can register their names. The president of the Sidi Embarek neighbourhood association, Abdellah Mustafa, described scenes of chaos as people fled the police through the streets.

Eran como sombras, corrían por las calles y no se podía ni andar, una avalancha.

Most of those who crossed have already returned to Morocco, close to 70,000 according to the interior ministry, which puts the number still in the city at about 2,000. Vivas disputes that: he believes some 6,000 people remain, says nobody knows the real figure and complains that those present have not even been identified, which he treats as evidence that the state has not provided the means to manage the emergency. Many of those remaining are concentrated in El Príncipe, a labyrinthine district on the city's heights often compared to Brazilian favelas.

The minors stuck in limbo

The most acute pressure has fallen on Ceuta's child protection system. President Juan Jesús Vivas stated on 5 August that the city is now caring for 1,100 unaccompanied minors, up from around 750 before the crisis. The law sets the number Ceuta must care for in a migratory contingency at 90, so the current caseload is about twelve times that figure, roughly 1,100% above it. Vivas himself put the overload at 2,600% above the city's critical capacity.

Comprenderá que es una situación absolutamente insostenible.

Vivas confirmed that transfers of minors to the Spanish peninsula have begun under Royal Decree-Law 2/2025, the emergency measure that obliges the regions to take in unaccompanied children during extraordinary migratory contingencies, and insisted the city is applying the law. But he warned that the pace of arrivals overwhelms the legal framework itself, since the procedures for documenting and transferring minors are much slower than the rate at which they arrive.

Political resistance to redistribution

The arrival of thousands of migrants has exposed fractures between Spain's central government and its regions. The regional government of Galicia, led by the conservative Partido Popular, was non-committal about accepting a share of the unaccompanied minors. The regional presidency minister, Diego Calvo, said the question "we will talk about" and insisted the central government must first listen to the regions' concerns about their own capacity. He described the arrivals as "incessant" and called for a much more robust reinforcement of border policy.

No se puede permitir esta llegada incesante como si fuera algo normal.

In Catalonia, the separatist Junts party took an even harder line. Its congressional spokesperson, Míriam Nogueras, threatened to withdraw parliamentary support from the government if Catalonia is included in a mandatory redistribution scheme. She pointed to a precedent from a year earlier, when the party succeeded in excluding Catalonia from the redistribution of minors who had arrived in the Canary Islands.

Judicial and police scrutiny begins

A judge at Spain's National Court, María Tardón, has opened a preliminary inquiry into the border crossing. In a ruling dated 4 August, she asked the Guardia Civil to clarify whether they received any information in the days before the crossing that could have served as an alert. The judge also requested details of the police deployment, rescue operations in Spanish territorial waters, and the identities and causes of death of any fatalities. Separately, she has asked the National Police's immigration and borders unit for a report on whether the crossing was a coordinated action directed by a criminal organisation.

A parallel wave of disinformation

The crisis has been accompanied by a surge of false or misleading content on social media. Fact-checking outlet El Periódico catalogued several widely shared fabrications, including a video of people walking through arid hills that was presented as migrants heading toward Ceuta. The footage was actually a religious pilgrimage to Mount Ararat in Turkey, part of a Muslim festival held in early July. Other hoaxes included claims of stabbings by migrants, supposed plans to cede Ceuta to Morocco, and direct deportation flights to Italy, all of which ignored established European agreements.

Esto es lo que está bajando ahora mismo de Marruecos para seguir entrando a Ceuta.

The post, viewed more than 310,000 times, was entirely fabricated. El Periódico also challenged a recurring narrative linking migration to higher crime rates, noting that studies have not established a causal link between being an immigrant and committing more crimes, and that economic disparities, unequal educational opportunities, and judicial biases are more likely explanatory factors.