When 72,000 migrants crossed from Morocco into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in a single day, a crisis widely believed to have been facilitated by Rabat, the ensuing diplomatic spat came not between Spain and Morocco, but between Spain and Italy.
Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni, far from expressing solidarity with Spain, squarely blamed the country’s liberal immigration policy and called for Spain to be suspended from Schengen, introducing controls for travellers arriving into Italy by air and sea from Spain. This prompted the Spanish foreign minister to summon the Italian ambassador, demanding “European solidarity, not partisan demagoguery”.
Italy was not alone. Denmark and Finland backed the Italian move, while several other European leaders stopped short of calling for Spain’s suspension from Schengen but joined the chorus of criticism. Donald Tusk argued that “Spain must follow our example if Schengen is to survive”, and Austria threatened to close its own borders.
This, despite two inconvenient facts. Firstly, Ceuta and Melilla are outside Schengen’s free movement area, so travel from the enclaves to mainland Spain is controlled by Spanish authorities. Not a single migrant reached it. Second, the crossings were not the product of Pedro Sánchez’s immigration policy but of migration being weaponised, fitting a long-established pattern of Moroccan coercion towards Madrid.
The response looks like political opportunism. Spain is serving as a convenient foil, offering politicians a chance to talk tough on migration ahead of major elections in Europe and amid surging far-right popularity. In doing so, much of the mainstream did little to dispel the far-right’s narrative, and at points was hard to distinguish from it. Leader of the French National Rally, Jordan Bardella, similarly blamed Sánchez’s regularisation for “opening the doors of Europe” and demanded Spain’s suspension from Schengen, while Germany’s Alice Weidel suggested Schengen itself be suspended.
Europe’s leaders also echoed the international right. The White House hailed the scenes as proof of the “destructive philosophy” of “extreme left and globalist policies”. Trump has made the crisis a talking point for the midterms, while Stephen Miller said that this is a daily reality for the US under the Democrats.
Morocco has a long history of using migration to extract concessions from Spain. In 2021, a diplomatic rift over the Western Sahara led Rabat to allow an estimated 10,000 migrants into Ceuta, likely prompting Spain’s decision the following year to abandon its long-standing neutrality on the territory and back Morocco’s autonomy plan. Having already conceded on the Western Sahara, Madrid has relatively few bargaining chips left, leaving it increasingly hostage to its southern neighbour. Morocco, meanwhile, is buoyed by backing from the US and Israel, neither of which looks kindly upon the Spanish government for its positions on Iran, Palestine or much else.
Ten days before the crisis, Sánchez had travelled to Algiers to relaunch relations with Morocco’s regional rival. What followed bore all the hallmarks of a Moroccan reprisal, considering the sheer numbers, reduced border controls, and migrants’ own accounts that authorities encouraged them to cross. A social media campaign urging people to make the journey, from accounts that have reportedly since vanished, did the rest.
The Spanish government has not publicly blamed Morocco, instead attributing the surge to a recent Supreme Court ruling that ended the automatic return of migrants intercepted while swimming to Ceuta and Melilla. Yet Madrid, dependent on Moroccan cooperation, generally avoids a public blame-game. Indeed, the crisis has now been resolved though Spanish diplomacy, with the government claiming that 70,000 people have been returned – everyone except those underage.
Yet rather than apologise to Spain, in the immediate days after the crisis leaders doubled down. Italy and Denmark together gathered 20 other member states to sign a letter which squarely blames Sánchez’s immigration policy, even though several of those same countries have pursued similar migrant regularisation policies. Meloni’s own government quietly authorised half a million work permits for non-EU nationals over three years, allowing many irregular migrants already in Italy to regularise.
Tensions finally eased somewhat at an extraordinary meeting of EU interior ministers on 4 August, with ministers praising Spain’s “swift” response and the EU migration commissioner declaring “full solidarity” with Spain. Yet the solidarity came too late and was not entirely convincing, and the initial response will not be forgotten by Madrid.
The contrast with 2021 illustrates how much Europe’s political climate has changed. Then, messages of solidarity poured in. Ursula von der Leyen’s opened: “EU stands in solidarity with Ceuta and Spain”. This time, despite it being the same actor and the same method, she began with the “unacceptable” images from Ceuta and the need for swift returns.
Perhaps the most striking irony is that those who called for Spain’s suspension from Schengen have been among the loudest beneficiaries of European solidarity themselves. When the island of Lampedusa was overwhelmed in 2023, Meloni insisted that helping Italy was not solidarity with Italy but “a responsibility of Europe towards itself”, because Italy’s borders were Europe’s borders. Spain, then holding the EU presidency, never suggested suspending Italy from Schengen.
Denmark, meanwhile, received Spain’s backing during Donald Trump’s threats over Greenland. Sánchez signed the January statement defending Danish sovereignty alongside France, Germany, Italy, Poland and the UK. Three weeks before the Ceuta crisis, Finland secured Sánchez’s commitment of Spanish troops to Nato’s new northern mission, alongside those Spain already stations in Latvia.
By any definition, this was a hybrid attack, the kind Europe claims to be preparing for. Yet when the pressure came, through weaponised migration against a single member state, there was no collective response, only division and finger-pointing. For Spain, which must now wonder whether it could count on European solidarity in any future security crisis, that is hardly reassuring.
But the implications extend beyond Spain, and it is here that the episode amounts to an extraordinary own goal. European solidarity was never intended to be merely a moral principle; it was meant to serve as a deterrent. The lesson for Rabat, and every other coercive state watching, is that European unity buckles cheaply. A single day of pressure on one stretch of Europe’s external border was enough to provoke calls for Schengen itself to be dismantled. As governments across the continent compete to outflank an ascendant far right, that lesson will only become easier to exploit.
Lost amid the political theatre were the victims of the humanitarian catastrophe itself. At least 88 people are dead, and likely many more. The overwhelming majority of the 72,000 who crossed were young Moroccans who were sold a lie, instrumentalised first by their own authorities as leverage against Madrid, and then by European politicians as ammunition in an argument they were already having with one another.
Crises have a way of holding up a mirror. In Ceuta, Europe saw not only how vulnerable it remains to hybrid coercion, but what its response to that coercion has become. Quick to assign blame, slow to show solidarity, and almost silent about the human lives lost in the process. That should concern Europeans at least as much as it encourages those who would seek to divide them.
[Further reading: The Ceuta crisis has exposed Europe’s hollow centre]
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