Marrakech – As expected, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly has staged an unprecedented first-ever colonial spectacle in Melilla, parading approximately 60 parliamentarians from 15 member countries through occupied Moroccan territory as if sovereignty were not in dispute.

This provocative two-day visit, extensively covered by Spanish news outlets and which began Friday, represents a direct challenge to Moroccan sovereignty and threatens to unravel years of diplomatic recovery between Madrid and Rabat.

The theatrical display of European arrogance was orchestrated by Fernando Gutiérrez Díaz de Otazu, a Spanish senator from the Popular Party (PP) representing Melilla, who secured his position as vice president of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly six months ago.

Despite initial reservations from the Spanish Ministry of Defense – which had even canceled events commemorating the Alhucemas landing centennial to avoid antagonizing Morocco – the Sánchez government ultimately sanctioned this colonial performance.

During their stay, the NATO delegation met with Melilla’s president Juan José Imbroda, government delegate Sabrina Moh, and local police and Civil Guard officials to discuss migration issues.

They also visited the overcrowded Temporary Immigrant Stay Center (CETI) and attended a military showcase at the Rostrogordo firing range, where General Luis Cortés, Melilla’s general commander, presented “the role of the Spanish Army in Melilla.”

The visit concluded with a tribute to “those who died for Spain” – a ceremony that painfully lays bare the occupying nature of Spanish presence on African soil – and a guided tour of the old city.

Marcos Perestrello, the Portuguese socialist who heads the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, said that Spain “would never be left alone” if it faced security threats. He stressed that European security must also address “instability on the southern flank,” as it  “fuels illegal migration, hybrid warfare, and terrorism.”

Even NATO rejects Spain’s African enclaves

The status of Melilla within NATO has been controversial. In 2022, then-NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg clearly stated that Spain’s so-called “autonomous cities” are not automatically covered under the collective defense umbrella of Article 5 of the Atlantic Alliance Treaty under the new strategic concept approved at the Madrid summit.

Stoltenberg specifically recalled that Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty defines “the geographical scope” covered by “collective defense guarantees” and specifically includes territories in Europe, North America, or islands “under the jurisdiction of any of the parties in the North Atlantic area above the Tropic of Cancer.”

Both Ceuta and Melilla lie outside this scope because they are in continental Africa.

Despite this unambiguous position, Melilla’s president, Imbroda, defiantly insisted during the NATO delegation’s visit that the autonomous city “is covered by NATO’s umbrella” because “it is an integral part of the Spanish State’s territoriality.”

Gutiérrez Díaz de Otazu attempted to justify this contradiction by explaining that NATO’s founding treaty from 1949 has only been revised once, in 1966, due to France’s temporary withdrawal, and has not been modified since “to avoid creating difficulties or disruptions” in the alliance’s functioning.

The historical context of Melilla exposes the fiction of Spanish claims. Melilla was seized in 1497 in the wake of Granada’s fall, with its capture justified by the language of “civilization” that European crowns wielded to cloak raw imperial domination.

Far from being integral to Spain or an organic extension of Iberian identity, Ceuta and Melilla historically carried second-rank status – garrison towns and bargaining chips in the scramble for Mediterranean influence, serving more as open-air prisons, military installations, and dens of smuggling than as cities of civic value. Spanish archives themselves reveal the fiction of permanence.

The Lisbon Treaty of 1686 first gave nominal recognition, yet for centuries, Madrid considered trading the enclaves to Britain in exchange for Gibraltar or abandoning them altogether. In 1811, the Cadiz Cortes even declared they were not Spanish territories and suggested their return to Morocco.

Only in 1913, in the fever of modern colonialism, did Spain elevate them to plazas de soberanía (“territories of sovereignty”), and not until 1955 – on the eve of Morocco’s independence – were they granted full sovereignty under Madrid’s constitution. Even then, they remained under military administration.

Unfinished decolonization

Spain’s claim of “five centuries of uninterrupted sovereignty” is not history but propaganda, a narrative concocted to disguise that the enclaves were for most of their existence bargaining chips and expendable outposts. For Morocco, the enclave was taken in 1497 and has been fortified, militarized, and used as a European gateway to Africa.

The issue of Ceuta and Melilla remains unresolved. Until Ceuta and Melilla are returned, Morocco’s decolonization remains incomplete. The reason Morocco does not publicly open this file today is to avoid creating multiple fronts simultaneously, as the country now focuses all its efforts on finalizing the Western Sahara file first.

Rumors of a possible visit by King Felipe VI to Ceuta and Melilla (the Spanish Crown has not traveled there since 2007) would cross a dangerous red line and constitute a direct challenge to Moroccan sovereignty. Such a royal appearance would risk returning relations to the dark days of 2021.

That crisis erupted when Spain offered medical treatment to separatist Polisario Front leader Brahim Ghali, who entered a Logroño hospital under a false identity, provoking one of the worst bilateral ruptures in decades: Rabat recalled its ambassador, froze political contacts, and allowed migratory pressure at the Ceuta border to explode in May 2021.

Spain’s colonial duplicity reaches staggering proportions when examined alongside its self-righteous posturing on the global stage.

The same Spain that parades itself as a champion of Palestinian liberation – recognizes Palestine as a state, imposes arms embargoes on Israel, and lectures Netanyahu about occupation – stubbornly clings to its colonial possessions in North Africa.

Madrid demands Britain return Gibraltar because it is a foreign enclave on Spanish soil, yet refuses to apply that identical logic to Ceuta and Melilla. Spanish media shout about “territorial integrity” regarding Gibraltar, but whisper about “historical sovereignty” when Morocco raises its legitimate claims.

This double standard reflects a deeper colonial mentality: what belongs to Europe must be returned; what belongs to Africa must be retained.

The separating fence between occupied Melilla and Morocco stands as a steel scar across African soil, witnessing waves of desperate migration and tragedies at Europe’s southern border. These enclaves serve as parasitic economic hubs – artificial anomalies that undermine Morocco’s customs revenue by an estimated $1.5 billion annually through smuggling operations.

Today, Ceuta and Melilla are fenced-off enclaves on African soil, ringed with barbed wire, double fences, watchtowers, and EU-financed surveillance drones – Europe’s militarized southern border posts where African migrants are beaten back or left to drown.

To call them ordinary parts of Spain is to perpetuate a colonial fiction, one that international law explicitly rejects.

The principle that acquiring territory by force is illegal is codified in the United Nations Charter (Article 2(4)), the 1970 Declaration on Principles of International Law, and Security Council Resolution 242.

This cornerstone of international law asserts that no territorial acquisition resulting from the threat or use of force can be recognized as legal, upholding the prohibition of force and the primacy of territorial integrity – the same principle that condemns Israel’s settlements applies with equal clarity to Spain’s enclaves.

This NATO visit is not about security. It is a calculated attempt to internationalize occupation, to transform a colonial anachronism into a seemingly legitimate Western presence on African shores. By inviting NATO to deliberate inside an African city that Spain insists is “European,” Madrid seeks to blur geographical and legal realities that even the Alliance itself acknowledges.

Either Spain believes occupied lands must be returned to their rightful owners, or it does not. If it refuses to confront its colonial past in North Africa while preaching justice in Palestine, then every word it utters about occupation elsewhere is mere theater – a performance hiding its own colonial hand.