{"id":1188250,"date":"2026-09-05T17:39:17","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T17:39:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1188250\/"},"modified":"2026-09-05T17:39:17","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T17:39:17","slug":"ceuta-should-morocco-have-killed-migrants-at-the-fence-to-satisfy-spain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1188250\/","title":{"rendered":"Ceuta: Should Morocco Have Killed Migrants at the Fence to Satisfy Spain?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marrakech \u2013 \u201cApparently, the Spanish wanted Moroccan police to use live ammunition and kill people to feel satisfied.\u201d With that line, posted September 5 on X, Moroccan author and political analyst Samir Bennis<\/a> compressed a month of accumulated grievance into a single, unsparing charge.<\/p>\n

He was reacting to footage circulated by a Spanish user, Francisco (Peperufo2), showing Moroccan security agents standing in the water off Tarajal, waving swimmers back and pulling drowning people out, as they moved to halt the July 30 rush toward occupied Ceuta.<\/p>\n

For Bennis, the images demolish the script Spain built. Madrid, he reasoned, would only have been satisfied had Rabat opened fire \u2013 the one outcome that would have spared Spanish commentators from accusing Morocco of engineering a crisis \u201cto use it as a weapon of \u2018blackmail.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Los v\u00eddeos que voy a compartir con ustedes, gracias al se\u00f1or Francisco, confirman lo que llevo diciendo desde el principio de esta crisis: que Marruecos ha sido el blanco de una campa\u00f1a de demonizaci\u00f3n deliberada, coordinada e interesada por parte de los medios de comunicaci\u00f3n\u2026 https:\/\/t.co\/x83UsWMUf4<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Samir Bennis (@SamirBennis) September 5, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That inversion \u2013 Morocco damned for restraint, damned for force \u2013 sits at the center of his argument. In the same September 5 thread, Bennis cast the videos as evidence \u201cpassed over by a press more interested in discrediting Morocco than in shedding light on what really happened,\u201d part of \u201cone of the most malicious and perverse demonization campaigns of our era.\u201d<\/p>\n

Much of Spain, he wrote, now looks at its neighbor \u201cthrough blinders, from ideological closure and ignorance,\u201d as if the country \u201clived in an open asylum\u201d and Morocco were \u201cthe only medicine\u201d it can reach for. He went further, urging the Moroccan state to \u201cform a team of lawyers and take legal action against this whole band of propagandists,\u201d while faulting Morocco\u2019s own state media, flush with resources, for going on vacation instead of answering the Spanish narrative with documentation.<\/p>\n

\n

He aqu\u00ed uno de los v\u00eddeos que han sido obviados por la prensa espa\u00f1ola, as\u00ed como por aquel absurdo informe del CENIF. En el v\u00eddeo se ve a agentes de las fuerzas de seguridad marroqu\u00edes dentro del agua, tratando de impedir que quienes intentaban asaltar la frontera cruzaran a nado\u2026 https:\/\/t.co\/g0xQuRYujg<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Samir Bennis (@SamirBennis) September 5, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A press that lives in an imaginary reality<\/b><\/p>\n

The charge did not appear from nowhere. A day earlier, Bennis had written that \u201ca state of total, irrational, and incredibly self-interested hysteria\u201d had gripped the Spanish press for nearly a month, minting imaginary \u201cproofs\u201d by the hour that supposedly revealed Morocco\u2019s intent not merely to \u201cinvade\u201d Ceuta and Melilla and stage a new Green March, but even to invade peninsular Spain itself.<\/p>\n

The irrationality had reached such a pitch, he wrote, that \u201cone begins to wonder whether those who feed this discourse live in our world or in an imaginary, alternative reality.\u201d What makes Madrid\u2019s Ceuta-Melilla hysteria particularly telling is that Rabat \u2013 for now at least \u2013 has characteristically kept its silence and made no declaration announcing any intent to reopen the Ceuta and Melilla file. In this sense, Morocco\u2019s composure and restraint have given the Ceuta crisis and its immediate and distant aftermaths the uncanny feel of Spain being at war and in a tense debate with itself<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

Un estado de histeria total, irracional e incre\u00edblemente interesada se ha apoderado de buena parte de los medios de comunicaci\u00f3n espa\u00f1oles desde hace ya casi un mes. No pasa pr\u00e1cticamente una hora sin que la prensa espa\u00f1ola eche m\u00e1s le\u00f1a al fuego y aporte nuevas \u00abpruebas\u00bb\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2014 Samir Bennis (@SamirBennis) September 4, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Indeed, Bennis has located the true source of Spain\u2019s ongoing delirium over Ceuta elsewhere. The hysteria, he argued, owes less to the enclave than to \u201cthe change of paradigm\u201d underway between Madrid and Rabat. Many Spaniards, accustomed since the mid-nineteenth century to \u201ca profoundly asymmetrical relationship\u201d in which Madrid could dictate terms to Rabat, have not grasped that the era is over: Spain \u201cno longer has the same levers to bend Morocco,\u201d and today\u2019s Morocco \u201cis not the same as three decades ago.\u201d That, he wrote, is why almost any news of Moroccan economic progress, military modernization, or diversified alliances is read in certain Spanish circles \u201cas a threat.\u201d<\/p>\n

S\u00e1nchez supplies the rebuttal<\/b><\/p>\n

The irony he presses is that Spain\u2019s own prime minister supplied the rebuttal. In his September 3 appearance before Congress, Pedro S\u00e1nchez conceded that Spanish forces on the Ceuta breakwater had eased their containment as thousands surged forward, because forcing back a crowd that size risked a massacre. Bennis fastened on that admission, and on the media\u2019s near-total silence about it.<\/p>\n

The detail \u201chas gone almost completely unnoticed,\u201d he wrote, \u201cperhaps because it does not fit the narrative that has been constructed over the past few weeks.\u201d His question followed inexorably: \u201cIf we consider that decision legitimate and reasonable when it is made by the Spanish security forces, why do we not at least give Morocco the benefit of the doubt?\u201d That, for him, is \u201cthe double standard that angers many Moroccans.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bennis anchored the point in memory. He recalled that between late September and early October 2005, successive mass attempts to scale the fences around Ceuta and Melilla left several people dead and many injured, and that Morocco then \u201cfaced severe criticism from Spanish media outlets, non-governmental organizations, and international human rights organizations over the use of force.\u201d<\/p>\n

As he noted, those events \u201cinflicted considerable reputational damage on Morocco\u201d and did so \u201cduring a particularly sensitive period for Rabat regarding the Sahara issue.\u201d For Bennis, that precedent may well have weighed on the choices made on July 30 and 31. \u201cIf Morocco uses force and people are killed, it is accused of brutality and human rights violations,\u201d he explained. \u201cIf it refrains from using force against a crowd that overwhelms the security deployment, that decision is automatically interpreted as evidence that Morocco deliberately opened the border in order to blackmail Spain.\u201d<\/p>\n

S\u00e1nchez sharpened<\/a> the point himself when he rounded on the opposition. \u201cWhat would you have done? Ordered the police to shoot the civilian population?\u201d he asked Alberto N\u00fa\u00f1ez Feij\u00f3o, before invoking Jos\u00e9 Mar\u00eda Aznar and Iraq \u2013 \u201cothers led us into a war with false evidence\u201d \u2013 to explain why he would not move against Rabat absent proof.<\/p>\n

The prime minister granted that on July 30 Morocco\u2019s Gendarmerie let crossings through and then reasserted control, leaving open whether that was inability or inaction. But he refused the rupture demanded by the Partido Popular (PP) and Vox, the latter branding the events an \u201cinvasion\u201d and the prime minister a \u201ctraitor.\u201d \u201cWe have to keep collaborating with Morocco,\u201d he told the chamber, adding that after what happened \u201cthis cooperation has to be different.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bennis pushed the mirror further in a later September 5 post, turning the interrogation directly on Madrid: let \u201cthe armada of Spanish talk-show pundits\u201d explain why the Guardia Civil at the border opened the gate and let everyone through \u2013 why they did not keep it shut. \u201cWas it not precisely their responsibility to prevent those people from entering Ceuta? So why did they let them pass?\u201d The answer, he wrote, is the one S\u00e1nchez already gave \u2013 a \u201cdesbordamiento\u201d the forces could not contain without risking a \u201cmassacre.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Que la armada de tertulianos espa\u00f1oles nos explique expl\u00edcame por qu\u00e9 la Guardia Civil espa\u00f1ola que estaba en la frontera abrieron la puerta y dejaron pasar a toda esa gente. \u00bfPor qu\u00e9 no la mantuvieron cerrada? \u00bfNo era precisamente su responsabilidad impedir que esas personas\u2026 https:\/\/t.co\/o1F2Ta7iyD<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Samir Bennis (@SamirBennis) September 5, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Judging identical conduct as understandable from Spain but as proof of guilt from Morocco is \u201cthe real heart of the problem between us and you: the double standard.\u201d Relations, he insisted, must rest on \u201crespect, reciprocity, and equal treatment\u201d \u2013 \u201cwhy? Because you are Spanish and we are Moroccan?\u201d<\/p>\n

To those hunting escalation, S\u00e1nchez offered a blunt rebuttal: \u201cToday in this chamber we have heard many who want to blow up our relations of good neighborliness. Their proposal is to escalate a conflict without restraint. I cannot do that, I should not do that, and I will not do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bennis reads that belligerence as theater with a short shelf life. The Spanish political class, he argued September 5, has already absorbed a reality that academics, media, and \u201cthe irreducible idealists of the left\u201d have so far depressingly failed to register. And that reality is that the balance has shifted and Spain now needs Morocco to protect its interests across Africa.<\/p>\n

He is \u201cnot worried in the slightest\u201d by Feij\u00f3o\u2019s warlike register: like Mariano Rajoy in opposition, the PP leader \u201cwill have no choice but to recalibrate his discourse\u201d in power and make Morocco the destination of his first foreign trip. Absent that ballast, Bennis warned, \u201cthank God ordinary people do not hold power. Otherwise, we would already be at war.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Menos mal, y gracias a Dios, que la gente de a pie, que antes apenas le\u00eda y que ahora parece obtener buena parte de su informaci\u00f3n, o desinformaci\u00f3n, de las redes sociales y de medios de comunicaci\u00f3n m\u00e1s interesados en echar le\u00f1a al fuego, no tiene el poder. De lo contrario,\u2026 https:\/\/t.co\/JMVMk88Rl1<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Samir Bennis (@SamirBennis) September 5, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

No gendarme, no concierge<\/b><\/p>\n

Beneath the polemic lies the structural claim Rabat has pressed for years: it is not Europe\u2019s border guard. Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita drew the line as early as October 2018, declaring that Morocco \u201chas never been, is not, and will never be anyone\u2019s gendarme.\u201d He again repeated the same forthright warning in May 2021, this time stressing that the kingdom is \u201cneither the gendarme<\/a> nor the concierge of Europe.\u201d Morocco guards its own frontier, not Spain\u2019s, and refuses to seal a border that is not its own at the cost of its people, its resources, and the lives massed against the fence.<\/p>\n

The money exposes how lopsided the bargain has been. Brussels committed roughly \u20ac222 million to Moroccan migration management between 2021 and 2024, with about \u20ac190 million more pledged<\/a> through 2027. T\u00fcrkiye, by contrast, drew some \u20ac1.19 billion for migration management alone \u2013 a \u20ac220 million border-surveillance project and a \u20ac398 million package in 2025 among them \u2013 atop close to \u20ac12.4 billion for refugees and host communities since 2011.<\/p>\n

Morocco polices one of the most sensitive corridors of the Western Mediterranean and the only land border between the EU and a non-European state, yet is paid a fraction of what a larger transit partner receives, and is still cast as the culprit whenever the wall is breached.<\/p>\n

Bennis has answered the deeper accusation elsewhere. In a September 4 essay, he dismantled<\/a> the \u201chybrid war\u201d thesis as mirror-imaging, observing that the clearest precedent for strangling a contested enclave is not Moroccan but Spanish \u2013 Madrid\u2019s siege<\/a> of Gibraltar.<\/p>\n

Beginning in the mid-1950s, Franco\u2019s government throttled the Rock by degrees: it froze work permits for Spanish laborers, cut commercial and telephone links, and in 1969 sealed the land border outright, barring some 4,666 Spanish workers \u2013 roughly a third of Gibraltar\u2019s workforce \u2013 from crossing. That closure held for sixteen years, until 1985, dwarfing anything Morocco has imposed on Ceuta and Melilla.<\/p>\n

He has also gone after the police report now driving the far-right querella. The document \u2013 the same CENIF report Bennis derides as \u201cinfamous\u201d and \u201cplagued with lies and approximations\u201d about Morocco\u2019s alleged authorship \u2013 leans on footage of Moroccan gendarmes near the border to build its case.<\/p>\n

Yet Spanish fact-checkers Newtral and Maldita.es, both members of the International Fact-Checking Network, established through geolocation that the gendarmes were pushing trucks away from Ceuta, toward Tetouan \u2013 the reverse of what the report alleges. Bennis noted that the report\u2019s authors, whose aim was \u201cnot to inform but to disinform,\u201d never consulted those verifications, and that the National Police chief himself contradicted the findings.<\/p>\n

\n

Gracias, se\u00f1or Arroyo, por se\u00f1alar la mala fe tanto de quienes redactaron aquel informe, plagado de mentiras y aproximaciones acerca de la presunta autor\u00eda de Marruecos en lo ocurrido en Ceuta, como de la jueza, que tiene afiliaciones pol\u00edticas con el PP.<\/p>\n

Se ve que todo este\u2026 https:\/\/t.co\/aBJgzY2lNG<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Samir Bennis (@SamirBennis) September 5, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

His sharpest warning is reserved for the crown, should King Felipe VI visit the occupied cities. S\u00e1nchez called for such a visit in his speech to the Spanish MPs, appearing to suggest that such a development would appease locals in Ceuta and forcefully project Madrid\u2019s commitment to the region. But Bennis, recalling that the 2007 royal trip cost Madrid its ambassador in Rabat for two months, argued<\/a> that such a visit would be \u201ca serious error and an act of immense imprudence that would, in all likelihood, provoke a reaction from Morocco.\u201d The through-line, in his telling, is a Spain still reading its neighbor through a nineteenth-century, atavistic prism, unwilling to grant that Morocco has changed, and that the balances have changed with it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Marrakech \u2013 \u201cApparently, the Spanish wanted Moroccan police to use live ammunition and kill people to feel satisfied.\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1188251,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5312],"tags":[309378,315161,2000,299,113425,322012,104,222914],"class_list":["post-1188250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-ceuta-mass-crossing","tag-ceuta-mass-migration","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-morocco-and-spain","tag-samir-bennis","tag-spain","tag-spanish-media"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/117219659822999089","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188250","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=1188250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188250\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1188251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1188250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1188250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1188250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}