{"id":67387,"date":"2026-08-07T18:32:29","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T18:32:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/67387\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T18:32:29","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T18:32:29","slug":"spain-threatens-retaliation-on-italy-if-border-controls-not-lifted-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/67387\/","title":{"rendered":"Spain threatens retaliation on Italy if border controls not lifted"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Spanish government has called on Italy<\/a> to lift immediately the suspension of the \u2018Schengen area\u2019 imposed following the migration crisis in Ceuta<\/a> more than a week ago, and has given it a deadline of three days \u2013 until Sunday 9 August \u2013 to do so; otherwise, \u201cSpain<\/a> will be forced to adopt proportionate measures to protect the interests and dignity of its citizens\u201d.<\/p>\n

Government sources have urged Giorgia Meloni<\/a>\u2019s government to rectify its position, \u201cput an end to the checks and treat Spaniards in the same way as other European citizens\u201d. The Spanish government has condemned the fact that on 1 August, Italy reintroduced \u201cborder controls with Spain\u201d, which has affected \u201cthe movement of thousands of passengers and created legal uncertainty in the middle of the summer holiday period\u201d.<\/p>\n

Officials at Moncloa have pointed out that the measure is \u201cunprecedented in recent history\u201d, as well as having been adopted \u201cwithout prior notice, unilaterally, and on spurious grounds that do not comply with either the Schengen Borders Code or the truth\u201d. \u201cIt is unfair, contrary to the interests of the EU, and discriminatory towards the Spanish population,\u201d they reiterated regarding the initiative.<\/p>\n

The government has insisted that Meloni is ignoring the fact that none of the migrants who entered Ceuta irregularly last week \u201ccould or can enter the Schengen area freely because the autonomous city\u201d has \u201ca special status within it\u201d. They have also emphasised that \u201cvirtually all\u201d of the irregular migrants \u201chave already returned to Morocco<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

As Prime Minister Pedro S\u00e1nchez<\/a> pointed out, the sources also indicated that, according to Frontex, Italy is the \u201cMember State that has recorded the highest number of irregular crossings in recent years, with figures that have reached double those of Spain\u201d and that, since 2022, its government \u201chas not complied with the Dublin Regulation, placing an additional burden of migratory pressure on the rest\u201d of European countries.<\/p>\n

Despite this, the Spanish government has maintained that it \u201chas never introduced controls against Italy\u201d and \u201chas always shown solidarity\u201d, taking in \u201csome of the migrants who arrived in Lampedusa in 2023 and repeatedly opening its ports to migrants rescued on the central Mediterranean route\u201d.<\/p>\n

On 31 July, the Italian government temporarily suspended the \u2018Schengen\u2019 agreement with Spain, bringing free movement across maritime and air borders to a standstill, and introduced border controls in response to the migration crisis in Ceuta \u2013 a measure Rome has defended as necessary to \u201csafeguard national security\u201d.<\/p>\n

Italian authorities stated that the border controls would not entail any changes for Italian, Spanish or other Schengen Area citizens travelling to Italy, but would only affect non-EU nationals travelling from Spain. However, at Italian airports such as Rome and Venice, there is a specific queue at passport control for travellers arriving exclusively from Spain to present their documentation.<\/p>\n

The closure of the \u2018Schengen Area\u2019 triggered a diplomatic crisis between the two countries, leading to the summoning of the Italian ambassador in Madrid<\/a>, Giuseppe Buccino Grimald. The Spanish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Jos\u00e9 Manuel Albares, also criticised his Italian counterpart for linking the mass arrival of migrants in Ceuta to the regularisation process, describing it as \u201cpartisan demagoguery\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, also publicly called on Italy to lift border controls with Spain, whilst emphasising that there has been no risk to the \u2018Schengen area\u2019 as, as he stressed, no one can leave Ceuta and Melilla without being identified. In this regard, he noted that his Italian counterpart, Matteo Piantedosi, had expressed \u201cappreciation\u201d for the work of Pedro S\u00e1nchez\u2019s government in responding to the crisis in Ceuta.<\/p>\n

At the meeting with the other European interior ministers, Marlaska also stated that he did not understand the introduction of border controls because, in his view, there is no risk of these migrants crossing onto the mainland and moving through other EU countries.<\/p>\n

For his part, the Italian Foreign Minister, Antonio Tajani, argued that Rome\u2019s decision to exclude Spain from the Schengen Area \u201cis in line with the treaties\u201d of the European Union<\/a>, claiming that there are migrants remaining in the autonomous city of Ceuta who cannot be deported.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat will become of them? Where will they go?\u201d, asked the head of Italian diplomacy in a post in which he took the opportunity to emphasise that \u201cthe new EU Pact on Asylum and Migration has a distinctly Italian character, following in the footsteps of the teachings of Silvio Berlusconi and the governments he led\u201d.<\/p>\n

In a message addressed to his Spanish counterpart, Jos\u00e9 Manuel Albares, he also boasted that Rome had reduced the influx of irregular migrants by 60 per cent since 2023, whilst in the first seven months of 2026, landings had fallen by 80 per cent compared with the same period three years earlier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Spanish government has called on Italy to lift immediately the suspension of the \u2018Schengen area\u2019 imposed following…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67388,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1998,3299,333,4446,6213,866,605,82,599,600,2264,205,26711,14730,17],"class_list":["post-67387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-border-control","tag-ceuta","tag-european-union","tag-giorgia-meloni","tag-illegal-immigrants","tag-italy","tag-latest-headlines","tag-madrid","tag-majorca","tag-mallorca","tag-morocco","tag-pedro-sanchez","tag-political-crisis","tag-schengen-rules","tag-spain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67387\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}