How 50,000 People Surged Into a Spanish Exclave in Africa
New York Times · LC · trust 58/100
On Thursday, tens of thousands of Moroccans broke into Ceuta, a Spanish territory that neighbors Morocco. By Friday evening, most of them had left, hungry and disappointed.
Listen · 8:27 min Share full article Migrants near the Spain-Morocco border on Friday. Tens of thousands of people illegally entered the Spanish territory of Ceuta this week, though by Friday’s end most had returned. Credit... Abdel Majid Bziouat/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images By Jason Horowitz
Soon enough, he joined a crowd in the tens of thousands, many of whom were astonished to see Moroccan police urge them, as he recalled, to “come to Spain.” Some climbed over the fence, as he did, or dove through holes in the chain-link, or swam across the maritime border. Some wore wet-suits, sometimes kicking with flippers, or floated to the Spanish coast in orange life preservers, pink inflatable doughnuts around their waists. At least 60 people died in the mayhem.
“A lot of people came,” said Mr. Ahmidho, 37. “A lot.”
He was among roughly 50,000 people who crossed the border into a Spanish town of only 84,000 residents on Thursday and early Friday, according to the Spanish interior ministry. That was a more intense surge than in any equivalent period during the peak of the European migration crisis in 2015 .
By Friday morning, the city looked like the emergency that Europe has been trying to avoid since that era of mass migration 11 years ago, the last time so many non-Europeans surged into European-held territory, upended the continent’s politics and spurred the rise of its anti-immigrant right .
As the city’s residents hunkered down and shuttered their stores, groups of mostly young men with nowhere to go filled squares and avenues, condominium courtyards, hilltop overlooks and bridge underpasses. Some took dips in waters patrolled by a Spanish naval ship or waded through a band of floating detritus — plastic bags and water bottles — caught in the current. Others marched across a beach littered with the things their fellow arrivals had carried: single shoes, a shed wet-suit, mobile phone cases, an I.D. card from Casablanca.
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