sudden influx of migrants<\/a> had sparked political panic in Europe.<\/p>\n\u2018Adios\u2019<\/p>\n
France tightened checks on its border with Spain and said it would increase its police presence there fivefold to 334 officers and gendarmes by Saturday.<\/p>\n
Italy suspended its Schengen agreement with Spain allowing for visa-free movement between borders as of Saturday for one month.<\/p>\n
Several European countries had suggested Spain\u2019s membership in the Schengen free movement zone should be suspended, though Spain\u2019s foreign minister said integrity of the zone was \u201cguaranteed\u201d.<\/p>\n
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, in a letter to the heads of the European Commission and European Council, blasted the \u201cselfish\u201d reaction by some EU countries and called for a video meeting of the bloc\u2019s interior ministers.<\/p>\n
Madrid has already rushed troops, police, drones, divers and boats to the North African outpost that it has run for centuries.<\/p>\n
Overnight into Saturday, AFP journalists observed groups of young people wandering the beaches and streets of Ceuta. Dozens of men slept on the sand.<\/p>\n
At the border, some young people were seen turning back, saying \u201cadios\u201d or \u201cgoodbye\u201d to officers before crossing back to Morocco.<\/p>\n
More soldiers stood guard on the small beach next to the border fence, positioned under parasols in the morning.<\/p>\n
Buoys and flippers still littered the ground along the fence, while others floated in the water, remnants from the surge of people who had initially swum past the border post.<\/p>\n
Nearby an inflatable boat with security personnel patrolled in the thick fog.<\/p>\n
Spain\u2019s interior ministry said a new pneumatic barrier 500 metres (1,640 feet) in length was installed near the border post to reinforce security.<\/p>\n
\u2018A better future\u2019<\/p>\n
In Morocco, Soufian, 42, told AFP that he had been planning to make a swim from his coastal town of Martil, located less than 40 kilometres from Ceuta, when a friend told him that the border was open.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt didn\u2019t take long \u2014 just five minutes or less, maybe three \u2014 since it was right at the border.\u201d<\/p>\n
He explained he was motivated by the potential to visit his mother, who is ill and lives in Madrid.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven though there\u2019s no food, nothing at all, I\u2019ll endure anything to see my mother,\u201d Soufian said, adding he makes just 10 euros a day working 12-hour shifts as a security guard.<\/p>\n
As for the others who crossed, he said, \u201ceveryone wants to move up, wants a good future \u2014 something that doesn\u2019t exist in Morocco\u201d.<\/p>\n
What sparked the flow of migrants remains unclear.<\/p>\n
Morocco\u2019s authorities have not yet issued an official statement on the flow of migrants.<\/p>\n
Ceuta, a territory of just 18.5 square kilometres, and the nearby enclave of Melilla are Europe\u2019s only two land borders with Africa.<\/p>\n
Previous migrant surges have occurred during tensions between Spain and Morocco, including in 2021 which led more than 10,000 migrants to enter Ceuta in just two days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Migrants pass through a broken fence as they leave the Spanish enclave of Ceuta for the Moroccan border…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1123920,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5174],"tags":[49570,143021,2000,299,5187,1699,6657,6489,50914,34589,104],"class_list":["post-1123919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-border-security","tag-ceuta","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-european-union","tag-migration","tag-morocco","tag-north-africa","tag-schengen-area","tag-spain"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/117019789766030260","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1123919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1123919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1123919\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1123920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1123919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1123919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1123919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Migrants](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/c1_6174857.jpg\")
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