At least 2,700 people without documentation, of which it is estimated that 700 are minors, have swam to Ceuta this Monday from the neighboring city of Fnideq, of 77,000 inhabitants, old Castillejos, according to the Government Delegation. The arrival took place without the Moroccan authorities offering any resistance and after several weeks in which Morocco has decided to tighten the diplomatic cord with Madrid. The disagreement occurred after the Moroccan intelligence services discovered last April that the general secretary of the Polisario Front, Brahim Ghali, was taken in with a false identity in a hospital in Logroño suffering from covid-19. Moroccan diplomacy deplored this act, warned that it was taking note and threatened the Spanish Government with reprisals.
The arrival of 2,700 irregular migrants in a single day to Ceuta is an unprecedented event in the autonomous city. Not only because of the record number of arrivals, but also because of the delicate health context in which it occurs. Morocco decided to protect its population by closing the land borders of Ceuta and Melilla in March 2020. And several weeks ago it suspended its air connections with a quarantine of countries, as a preventive measure. Now, it is the Ceuta authorities who must face the humanitarian problem posed by this phenomenon. And it is up to the Government of Madrid and the European Union to assume the diplomatic pulse raised by Rabat.
According to sources consulted, the irregular entries this Monday represent a daily record that has not been reached even in the most critical periods of strong migratory pressure. In the Canary Islands, the most intense weekend, that of November 7 and 8, registered 2,000 arrivals. In 2018, the year with the highest record of irregular entries, the month of June recorded one of the most complicated weeks with the disembarkation between June 21 and 27 of almost 2,800 people, reports
María Martín.
The Interior Minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, chaired an emergency coordination meeting this afternoon to address the situation, which was also attended by the Secretary of State for Security, Rafael Pérez; the general director of the Police, Francisco Pardo; or the general director of the Civil Guard, María Gámez. At the meeting, it was agreed to reinforce the places most susceptible to passage in Ceuta with about 50 members of the Civil Guard. The National Police, for its part, is going to increase its troops in the autonomous city by more than 150 agents.
On April 26, after the reception of Ghali in Spain, 120 young people have already arrived in Ceuta swimming. This time, the figure has been widely exceeded. "We are overwhelmed," said a source in the autonomous city. “On Sunday, there were about 70 people in the warehouse where we welcome irregular migrants [and where they must comply with quarantine]. This Monday at noon there were already 180. I don't know what we are going to do with the rest or where we are going to put them ”.
A Fnideq neighbor informed this newspaper that the Moroccan police were completely passive. Videos were circulated on social networks where people could be seen swimming without anyone stopping them. The aforementioned source from the autonomous city specified: “The Moroccan police are letting the emigrants come to the beach closest to Ceuta. With which, they arrive here immediately ”. The absence of surveillance on Moroccan beaches contrasts in a country where there is rigorous police control at the entrance and exit of hundreds of municipalities, including Fnideq.
The trickle of arrivals began at three in the morning on Monday. And it didn't stop all day. They entered both through the Tarajal beach and through the Benzú area. Some of the new arrivals have gone to a warehouse in the Tarajal industrial estate, next to the border, enabled to maintain quarantine. According to Red Cross sources, the venue has a capacity for just over 200 people, less than 10% of the last number of entries. People being cared for are queuing at the doors, but the device is completely overwhelmed. According to local media, some of the people who have reached the autonomous city have dispersed directly through the city's neighborhoods, especially the El Príncipe neighborhood.
Since the closure of the border crossings in March 2020, there has been a constant trickle of arrivals through the points where the fence and the sea converge, both in Ceuta and Melilla.
This type of entry by swimming, crossing perched on the rocks of the breakwaters or through weak points of the fence, such as the sewage pipes, intensified during the summer and has grown due to the impossibility of accessing the autonomous cities by other routes From Morocco.
In Melilla, the Civil Guard has noticed a greater intensity of this type of crossings, which, however, tend to be individual or in small groups.
Never, until April, had a collective entry been registered like the one this Monday through the edges of the border perimeter.
Problem for Spain and the Moroccan authorities
The massive arrival poses a problem for Spain but clears another of great importance for the Moroccan authorities, since the Castillejos area is being seriously affected by unemployment after Rabat took action against smuggling and after the closure of borders that were produced in March 2020 due to the pandemic. The Foreign Minister, Arancha González Laya, indicated this Monday that she is not aware that the arrival of emigrants is due to Rabat trying to put pressure on the Spanish authorities.
The arrival boom registered this Monday is reminiscent of last April 26. That day, more than 128 people, according to data from the Red Cross, arrived in Ceuta through the beach near Fnideq. During two days of storm, they jumped into the sea due to the total inaction of the authorities on the other side of the border. A neighbor of the Moroccan town who closely followed the flight of dozens of young people in April told this newspaper on condition of anonymity: “It is not that our police officers collaborated. I know all of them and I know they wouldn't do that. What happened is that that weekend there was not a single police officer guarding the beaches. Everyone noticed ”.
At least two people died during the mass emigration that day.
Then, the negotiations between the Ministry of the Interior and Rabat made it possible to stop the entry of people into Ceuta with the deployment of Moroccan forces on the coast and enabled the rapid return of some 110 young people despite the strict border closure.
Only 30 minors remained sheltered in the autonomous city.
More information
Spain and Morocco reactivate returns in Ceuta despite the border closure
Morocco "deplores" that Spain welcomes the leader of the Polisario Front
The events of April represented a first blow to the table by Morocco, annoyed by the arrival in Logroño on April 18 of the leader of the Polisario Front to be treated for covid in Spain.
The fact that former US President Donald Trump in December recognized Morocco's sovereignty over Western Sahara has led Morocco to pressure Spain, Germany and the European Union in general to follow the same steps as Trump.
So far, the EU's response has been unanimous and calls on the two parties to the conflict to reach a mutually accepted agreement within the UN.
Civil Guard and Red Cross serve Moroccans in Ceuta, this Monday.Joaquín Sánchez
At the beginning of this month, a statement from the Moroccan Ministry of Foreign Affairs blamed Spain for the "inaction" of its Justice in allowing the entry of Ghali and made Madrid ugly for having acted "behind the back of a partner and neighbor."
Moroccan diplomacy recognized that Ghali's reception was a "sovereign decision of Spain", but warned that it would draw "all the consequences."
The nine Moroccan parties with parliamentary representation accused the Spanish Government in a joint letter of maintaining an "unacceptable and openly provocative" attitude.
The massive emigration from Fnideq is a relief for the Moroccan authorities, in an area where there have been several demonstrations in recent months, with hundreds of women demanding economic alternatives for closing the borders with Ceuta and Melilla.
Hundreds of families in cities close to the border such as Fnideq - next to Ceuta - or Beni Enzar, Chinatown and Farhana - next to Melilla - depended on cross-border relations, which have been suspended for more than a year since the closure of the official steps in March 2020 due to the pandemic. In Melilla alone, some 35,000 cross-border workers crossed the border every day. Domestic workers, skilled workers and employees in the service sector left on the other side of the pass lost their jobs and, in many cases, live on the wages they still receive from their employers through certified money transfer services.
The so-called atypical porting or trade has also been put to a definitive end, a form of smuggling that Rabat wanted to put an end to and that employed thousands of people, many of them coming from cities in the interior of Morocco, such as Fez or Casablanca.
In Fnideq, restaurants and shops were forced to close down.
Dozens of families of porters left the city to return to their hometowns in the Atlas Mountains.
Espigón de Benzú, on the Moroccan border with Ceuta, last morning.
Next to the back door of the car, a civil guard accompanies a swimmer. "Joaquin Sanchez" "Quino" ""
In February, hundreds of Fnideq residents took to the streets for up to four consecutive Fridays to demand the opening of borders with Spain. Authorities arrested several youths the first week. But that did not stop the following Friday thousands of neighbors, mostly women, from demonstrating again with shouts of: “What a shame! You have killed Fnideq ”,“ The people want to open the border ”,“ Freedom for the detainees ”. The police then chose to allow protests to gather, while the justice system released the prisoners and the authorities distributed food vouchers worth 30 euros. But the demonstrations continued. "We don't want handouts," they chanted.
While Morocco works on the economic reactivation of the north of the country, the population of the region languishes before the closure of the border, which has caused a constant trickle of arrivals to Ceuta and Melilla through the sea since the pandemic began and that It has intensified since the end of 2020. However, this type of massive swimming inlets had not been seen, as if a highway had been opened in the sea.
Finally, in March some 300 temporary contracts arrived for former porters willing to work in Tangier's textile industry.
But the situation is far from being solved at Fnideq.
Families ask for something as simple and difficult to find as a job.
Meanwhile, the town is once again in the spotlight of diplomatic relations between Rabat and Madrid.
Increase in arrivals also in the Strait
The entry into Ceuta coincides with an increase in the arrival of migrants by boat in the waters of the Strait and the Alboran Sea, after months of low activity.
In just eight hours, which go from seven in the morning on Tuesday to three in the afternoon, Salvamento Marítimo has rescued 46 immigrants, a woman among them, in a constant trickle that began at dawn in the vicinity of the southern area of Tarifa.
This is a figure higher than the 33 migrants rescued in Cádiz between April 8 and 28, according to sources from the Government Sub-delegation in Cádiz.
The rescued traveled aboard 13 small boats:
toy-
type inflatables
, kayaks and a canoe. About twenty of the newcomers are sub-Saharan and the rest of Maghreb origin. Except for three people who have arrived in Fuengirola (Málaga) and who have been transferred to the Malaga capital, the majority, who have arrived on the coast of Cádiz, are being transferred to the bay of Algeciras, where they have been operating since the migration crisis of 2018 a temporary attention center for foreigners (CATE), confirmed from the Subdelegation of the Government of Cádiz. Maritime Rescue sources explain that this rate of rescues is "much" more than what they were registering in recent times. "We are noticing an increase in both the Strait and the Alboran Sea," explained Manuel Capa, rescuer and CGT delegate of the Maritime Rescue works council.Capa has regretted that this increase in arrivals has begun to occur after Fomento has reduced the reinforcements of personnel that they had in the rescue boats, reports
Jesús A. Cañas.