Spain had to hastily set up a large morgue in the former Military Hospital of Ceuta for the worst migratory tragedy in the country’s recent history. “We have never rescued so many bodies,” the newspaper El Mundo quotes one of the officials, referring to the victims recorded after the avalanche of 60,000 migrants who last week entered the autonomous city, most by swimming, and who failed to reach solid ground. Although the government estimated the dead at 72, morgue sources organized to identify their bodies confirm that the number is 88. But the figure could reach a hundred or more when adding the bodies in the Moroccan zone.
The former Military Hospital of Ceuta, closed and unused since 2018, had to be quickly converted into a large morgue where the bodies of migrants, mostly men and Moroccans, are being stored, who are being returned by the waters in a continuous drip.
Alongside the humanitarian drama, both in Spain and Morocco, explanations—and those responsible—are being sought for the migratory avalanche. The Moroccan government attributed the migratory crisis in Ceuta to a combination of the actions of human trafficking networks, misinformation, and misunderstandings surrounding a ruling by the Spanish Supreme Court on “hot returns,” in its first public assessment of the massive incursion of tens of thousands of Moroccans into the Spanish autonomous city on Thursday and Friday via the Tarajal breakwater.
A spokesperson for the Moroccan Ministry of the Interior, through a statement collected by national media, stated that what happened in Ceuta was not the result “neither of spontaneous circumstances nor circumstantial factors,” but a combination of “the malicious exploitation of digital space and the activity of human trafficking networks,” along with “the promotion of misleading information and misinterpretations that accompanied recent decisions issued by the Spanish judicial authorities.”
These “misinterpretations,” derived from information poisoning, “strengthened among some of those wishing to migrate the conviction that it was possible to avoid immediate return,” stated the Ministry of the Interior. Rabat confirms 11 dead, 10 of them drowned, while working with Spain to verify the rest of the victims.
Regarding this, the newspaper El País says that a spontaneous outbreak on social networks encouraged the migratory flood of tens of thousands of young Moroccans. By midday Thursday, the echo of posts calling them to come to Ceuta was resounding on social media. “The Spanish border is open and you can cross without papers,” was the general slogan received by Ahmed, a 23-year-old unemployed young man, which mobilized a youth tide along the roads of the northern Maghreb country in an unprecedented migratory avalanche.
Almost everything was planned, the newspaper points out. The same networks cited points of sale for neoprene suits, fins, diving goggles, floaters, and even waterproof bags to carry documents and mobile phones. Screenshots of Google Maps were detailed to direct migrants to Tarajal beach, on the Ceuta border. Areas with less police surveillance to try to escape misery.
From Spain, meanwhile, the Government delegate in Ceuta, Miguel Ángel Pérez, assured this Sunday that he had “no kind of information” from his security services about the flood of people who irregularly entered the autonomous city on Thursday until they saw them crossing the border. “From my area of competence, which is not much regarding those services, I can assure you that this is the case,” he declared.
“We did not have, at least here in this Delegation, any kind of information until we started to see those people entering through the border in that way,” Pérez insisted, who had already said before: “What happens on Thursday morning everyone starts to have information when it happens. Before it happens no one had information.”
In the same vein, on Saturday, Spain’s Interior Minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, already assured that there was “no report regarding a situation like the one that occurred on the 30th (of July) that could have arisen.”
But sources from military and civil intelligence told the media outlet The Objective that the Spanish government knew about the possibility of a massive entry of migrants into Ceuta, coinciding with the Moroccan Throne Day, and ignored successive warnings before 60,000 people crossed the border. Almost all (53,000) have already returned to their country of origin, according to the Ministry of the Interior’s calculations.
These same sources explain that, coinciding with the monarchy’s festivity, intelligence services warned of the “probability” of a “gesture of magnanimity” by King Mohamed VI. To these first warnings, however, were soon added all the swimming crossings that were previously being made from Castillejos and the massive arrival of buses from different points of the neighboring country.
Within 10 days, around 1,000 immigrants had managed to reach the autonomous city after a sea crossing. Intelligence interpreted these flows as “tests” by Morocco and warned the government again.
The wave of immigrants overwhelmed the security forces deployed at the Tarajal border in seconds. The Civil Guard and the National Police could do nothing to stop the advance of these citizens, only attend to the injured. Sources from military and civil intelligence regret that the government did not activate the Army at the border from the outset, given that there were several garrisons prepared to act both in Ceuta and Melilla. “It could have been mobilized without prior meetings, simply after the political decision and the order from the operations command,” they explain.
Agents deployed in the area also describe that the Moroccan gendarmerie remained, in their words, “with arms crossed” while migrants crossed, both on the breakwater and on the access road to the border crossing, where other people jumped fences and climbed onto roofs.
But The Objective suggests that the massive arrival of tens of thousands of Moroccans to Ceuta between Wednesday and Friday was not only the result of mafia actions nor an accidental relaxation of border surveillance. Moroccan sources in France familiar with the kingdom’s power structures point to Fouad Ali El Himma, advisor and personal friend of Mohamed VI, as the man behind an operation aimed at weakening the government of Prime Minister Aziz Akhannouch and strengthening his control over the state apparatus, less than two months before the legislative elections.
El Himma, who besides being the chamberlain is known in certain circles as the “viceroy,” would have used the migratory chaos to discredit Akhannouch’s government, demonstrate his dominance over the levers of the state, and strengthen the Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM), created by him for the upcoming elections on September 23.
The timing chosen to allow the avalanche was also not accidental. Mohamed VI delivered his speech on Wednesday night on the occasion of the 27th anniversary of his accession to the throne. In that speech, the monarch presented an image of stability and economic progress. Hours later, thousands of Moroccans were trying to leave the country heading to Ceuta. The contrast between the official speech and the images of the border was devastating. “The best way to demonstrate the failure of a government is to show its population fleeing,” summarizes to The Objective one of the people who knows the kingdom’s power structures.
As if that were not enough, the newspaper El Español reports that the Spanish Civil Guard detected through the camera system deployed at the Ceuta border the presence of agents from the Moroccan intelligence service infiltrated among the groups of immigrants who irregularly accessed the autonomous city during the last migratory wave.
This is exclusively revealed to that media by sources from the Armed Institute’s General Staff, who assure that these individuals were located during real-time monitoring through the advanced and cutting-edge video surveillance system that controls the border perimeter.
According to these sources, the presence of members of the Moroccan intelligence services mixed among the migrants is not an isolated fact, but a phenomenon that the Civil Guard says it has detected in previous episodes of migratory pressure on Ceuta and Melilla.
They point out that an operation of this nature, typical of “hybrid warfare,” could not have been carried out without the participation of the service operating in Morocco. “It is the logical procedure for any intelligence service.” According to these sources, the purpose of that presence would be the initial supervision of the massive entry that took place last week and to obtain first-hand information about the Spanish device deployed at the border, observe the operational response of the Security Forces and Corps, and follow the events on the ground.
In fact, intelligence sources consulted by the newspaper ABC highlight the “muscle” that Rabat has in its spy network. In every neighborhood, there is the figure of the “Mugadem.” A person who finds out everything that happens and passes information to the regime. “It is impossible that they were not aware of a large march or a great exodus from different cities,” they add.
From the Spanish opposition, they point directly at Morocco. Hardening the criticism more than any other of her colleagues from the Popular Party, the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, warned that “this is a test from Morocco for the next one.” “This is going to get worse,” she said forcefully. “I would like to know why the government (of Pedro Sánchez) thanks Morocco. What is happening is catastrophic. We cannot allow Ceuta to be invaded, because it is in those plans. They will try to take it from us.”
Ayuso’s statements were in line with those expressed by Santiago Abascal. The Vox leader defined what happened last Thursday in Ceuta as “a brutal attack on our sovereignty,” “an invasion,” and even “an act of war, promoted by Morocco and tolerated and allowed by Pedro Sánchez in various ways,” referring, he said, to the regularization of immigrants launched last January by the socialist leader’s government.
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