What the intelligence report says

Spain's National Intelligence Centre (CNI) has given judge María Tardón of the Audiencia Nacional a report on the mass entry of migrants into Ceuta at the end of July, and it places much of the responsibility on Moroccan security forces. The report answers seven specific questions and rests mainly on investigations carried out after 30 and 31 July, when thousands of people entered the city.

“These investigations confirm that the Moroccan authorities were aware, days before the mass entry, that an anomalous situation was developing regarding possible attempts at irregular entry into Ceuta.”

Warnings sent before the entry

The report says social media calls for a mass entry into Ceuta, timed to the Fiesta del Trono (Throne Day), drew a large following and that Moroccan authorities knew their details. On 29 July, Spanish services sent an urgent alert to Moroccan services and passed on the WhatsApp and Facebook groups that were most active in the calls. From that point, the CNI argues, Morocco knew the extent, size, date and time of the possible forced entry, and it had decided to reinforce its existing security deployment.

A thin deployment and a priority elsewhere

Until the day before the mass entry, Moroccan authorities kept up some interception of swimmers, the dominant form of irregular entry until then. When arrivals surged, the CNI describes an insufficient deployment combined with passivity that overwhelmed the system. The report links part of the shortfall to Morocco prioritizing security for Throne Day celebrations in the nearby locality of Rincon, where King Mohamed VI was at the palace, and says tougher measures such as arrests and transfers inland came only after the peak of arrivals by land and sea. It also accuses the Royal Gendarmerie of checks that were insufficient to contain the influx.

Police and Guardia Civil at the El Tarajal gate

On 30 July, migrants who had crossed the El Tarajal breakwater crowded into an adjacent area, and the crush forced the gate open. Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska has called the situation one of 'maximum tension' and insisted there was 'perfect coordination', although only a handful of Guardia Civil agents were present at the time. A LaSexta report disputes that account, saying the Policía Nacional had orders to close the gate while the Guardia Civil wanted it kept open to save lives. Footage shows a Guardia Civil officer pointing migrants to the entry route while a Policía Nacional officer tried to block them. The gate was briefly shut, then reopened, and thousands crossed in the following hours.

Judicial deadline and the wider count

Judge Tardón ordered this line of inquiry on 16 September, at the request of prosecutors and after a complaint from Iustitia Europa, to reconstruct the flow of information before the events and the responses that followed. In a new order issued in mid-October, she noted that not all bodies had complied and gave the Policía Nacional's Dirección Adjunta Operativa three working days, a deadline she called 'improrrogable', to hand over all alerts, reports, orders and emails on the risk of a mass entry dated between 20 July and 7 August. The police must also identify who received each alert, when, and what was done in response. Her September order had put the movement at between 75,000 and 85,000 people and cited 83 deaths linked to the events.