Spain's royals will visit Ceuta and Melilla amid migration crisis and Moroccan claims

The visit

King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia will visit Ceuta on Tuesday, 13 October, and Melilla on Wednesday, 14 October, according to sources from the Royal Household cited by Portuguese and Spanish media. The couple will spend the night in Ceuta, and the programme in both cities is expected to be very similar. On arrival, the first item is a closed-door meeting with the mayors, Juan Jesús Vivas in Ceuta and Juan José Imbroda in Melilla. The royals will then meet 150 people from civil society, including National Police and Civil Guard officers, teachers, firefighters, tourism workers and small business owners. Representatives of different religious communities are also due to meet the couple, and the king is scheduled to give a speech in Ceuta.

The crisis behind the visit

About 80,000 people rushed into Ceuta from Morocco in late July, with the mass entry on 30 and 31 July according to El Mundo and eldiario.es. AP attributes the rush to online rumours that Spain had opened its border, and says most of those who crossed left within days while up to 15,000 migrants stayed. Sources give different totals: El Mundo puts the entry at between 70,000 and 80,000 people, Diário de Notícias and SAPO at more than 72,000, and eldiario.es at more than 80,000. Felipe VI broke his public silence on the crisis at a dinner in Madrid for French President Emmanuel Macron in late September, when he said European countries should have shown more solidarity with Spain and described the situation in Ceuta as unacceptable. In the week of 5 October he told Finnish President Alexander Stubb that Spain and Finland form an external border of the EU, and that threats to any member state require a shared effort by the 27.

Residents and aid

Many of the migrants who stayed have slept on streets, in doorways, and in tent camps and centres run by NGOs and locals, mostly in Muslim neighbourhoods. A spokesperson for the Luna Blanca charity said it has distributed between 3,000 and 5,000 meals per day to migrants still in the city, and that its volunteers have received threats and insults. Residents of El Principe, a Muslim-majority neighbourhood, say the chaos never ended for them, and one asked in early October, "What do they want? That we feed all of Ceuta?" According to Trouw, the Trampolín beach, where migrants had built a tent camp, is now empty after police moved people by bus to reception centres. Spanish police and thousands of soldiers have been deployed, and around 200 people demonstrated outside the city government in early October.

Morocco and the 2007 precedent

Morocco calls Ceuta and Melilla Sebta and Melila and regards them as Moroccan territory occupied by Spain for centuries, as Trouw reports. Spanish opposition parties have accused Moroccan officials of complicity, saying Moroccan agents helped migrants cross the border, and have accused Prime Minister Sánchez of being too soft on Rabat. On Friday, 9 October, Mohamed VI warned that cooperation between the two countries cannot be taken for granted. The precedent is the visit of Juan Carlos I and Queen Sofía on 5 and 6 November 2007, when Mohamed VI recalled his ambassador in Madrid on 2 November and Morocco's foreign ministry called the visit "lamentable". Mohamed VI publicly condemned the trip on 7 November, and the ambassador did not return to Madrid until January 2008, after the crisis had lasted about two months. Spain refused to negotiate its sovereignty over the cities at that time, according to eldiario.es.

What comes next

The visit is Felipe VI's first to the two cities since his proclamation in 2014, and eldiario.es reports that it comes as Rabat again presses its territorial claims. Spain's position, as eldiario.es describes it, is that both cities form part of its territory and of the European Union, and that Madrid does not question their sovereignty. The royal programme in Ceuta is set to mirror the one planned for Melilla, where the couple will meet the city's mayor, Juan José Imbroda, on Wednesday, 14 October.