Youssef (fictitious name to protect his identity) observes from the slope that leads to the Tarajal polygon, in Ceuta, the spectacle of the Spanish military deployment on the border with Morocco. Just a day before, he was the protagonist of the scene. He also came swimming across the border. "I have a problem," he cries, "I have my papers, but now I have entered (in an) irregular way." The young Moroccan has lived in Ceuta for more than 20 years. On March 12, 2020, a day before Morocco decreed the border closure with Ceuta and Melilla, he traveled to neighboring Fnideq, the old Castillejos, seven kilometers from the autonomous city, and more than a anus.
Ceuta, a city of about 85,000 inhabitants and 14 square kilometers, has experienced two unprecedented days in the history of border relations. More than 8,000 people have accessed the city, by swimming or on foot, avoiding the rocks, through the breakwaters of Benzú, to the north, and Tarajal, to the south, as a result of the diplomatic pulse that Rabat has thrown at Madrid. Their stories show the effects of the breakdown in cross-border relations on which the two regions on either side of the fence depended. Youssef is an example. "I couldn't go back any other way," he admits, "I tried, but they asked too much money for the tickets." This Monday was his chance, he started swimming and returned home. "With the appointment to renew my residence card, will they let me travel to the Peninsula?" He asks.
National Police and Army guard the immigrants in the ships of Tarajal (Ceuta). Joaquin Sanchez "Quino"
Francisco, a proud Ceuta, boasts of having "hired" two newcomers in the exodus of the last 48 hours.
“They approached me to ask for a job and I saw in their eyes that I had to hire them,” he says as he watches the young people handle the irons that will make up the structure of his fish drying business.
Amir, 25, is one of them.
It is not from neighboring Fnideq or from the Benyounes neighborhood, attached to the Benzú fence.
He arrived in Ceuta from Tetouan, 40 kilometers away, after swimming across the Tarajal beach.
"I wanted a job," he snaps.
“It's not just the people from Castillejos (or Fnideq),” says Samira, a 35-year-old Moroccan, “they come from Tangier, from Tetouan, from everywhere; is the
black march "
(Alluding to the Green March, invasion organized by Hasan II in 1975 on the Spanish Sahara). The woman swam across Monday afternoon accompanied by her 15-year-old son Ilias, and with a group "where a woman died," she details. A day later, he remembers with anguish some of the scenes from that short but harrowing journey: "There was a man with his two-month-old baby strapped to his back." His excuse is another loose end of the border closure that has affected employment and the economy in both Ceuta and Fnideq. She earned 400 euros a month as a domestic worker in the autonomous city. Now, he survives with what his employer sends him “one month yes and another no”. When asked about her husband, who has been left with the two daughters aged 20 and 6, she responds with a grimace. "People in Morocco have nothing, they do nothing," he gets upset.
By taxi from Tangier
Ganga, from Côte d'Ivoire, has worked for five years in Tangier, but did not see how to support his family on a laborer's salary. "I worked in the port in the Ivory Coast," he says, "I came to Morocco to work as a qualified port logistics worker, but I ended up destroying my hands as a bricklayer." He, his wife and their three children, ages four, two and one, took a taxi from Tangier to Fnideq on Monday and jumped into the sea at five in the afternoon. A day later he wanders through the Tarajal industrial estate, where the local Executive and the Government Delegation have enabled several warehouses to accommodate minors and women, considered vulnerable and, therefore, not subject to the express returns that the Government of Spain has made. since Monday afternoon. “There (in Morocco) I cannot support the family,” he says,"I want to request asylum to work here in conditions and meet their needs."
A group of immigrants are returned to Morocco by the Spanish authorities on the border between Ceuta and Fnideq (Castilejos) this Tuesday.Mohamed Siali / EFE
Hundreds of people of sub-Saharan origin have ventured, together with Moroccans, to swim to Ceuta. Many of them, after marathon walks from distant points to the border, fainted on the beach from exhaustion or hypothermia. In the fenced perimeter, over the border crossing and between wooded roads, the Moroccan security forces contained during the morning of Tuesday the constant arrival of men ready to jump the fence to access the autonomous city. "The Sub-Saharan Africans have arrived late," half jokes Reduan (not his real name), a Ceuta in his thirties. "By the time they tried to cross (to Ceuta), the Moroccan police were already stopping them." The young man speaks after leaving his cousin at the border to return to Morocco on his own feet.
Throughout the day, hundreds of kids, some barely teenagers, walked along the promenade that leads to the Tarajal pass to voluntarily return to Morocco. “What was I going to do here?” He comments about his relative, “that's it, they (the Moroccan youths) have come to spend the day and night and now they are going home; even their mothers will be telling them where they are ”.