cross a breakwater barrier<\/a>, Spanish authorities said Sunday. The humanitarian crisis caused by the sudden rush of people has reignited a debate around immigration in Europe and beyond.<\/p>\n\u201cIt’s not the young men’s fault,\u201d said Mohamad Abdelkader Driss, 44, a waiter at a fried fish restaurant in town. \u201cIf you open the border, of course everyone comes in, but the young men aren’t to blame. The authorities are responsible.\u201d <\/p>\n
Some migrants who returned to Morocco described a border that was effectively open and said authorities did little as they watched thousands of people cross.<\/p>\n
The unauthorized arrivals on Thursday and Friday of 50,000 to 60,000, mostly young men, swelled Ceuta’s population by more than half. Abdelkader lamented what happened, but said that those who breached the border behaved relatively well.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt could have been much worse,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Far-right politicians call for remaining migrants to be expelled<\/p>\n
Over the weekend, far-right, anti-immigrant Spanish politicians and well-known right-wing influencers descended on the city, sparking counterprotests that included members of the Spanish city’s large Muslim population, many of whom are of Moroccan descent. <\/p>\n
Alvise P\u00e9rez, a far-right Spanish politician and member of the European Parliament, called on Saturday evening for migrants to be expelled as he faced an angry crowd of rival protesters. P\u00e9rez eventually had to shelter in a bar as residents banged on the windows, until police escorted him away. <\/p>\n
Among the counterprotesters on Saturday was 20-year-old Ceuta resident and student Noor Ahmed. She denounced the protest and presence of figures like P\u00e9rez in her city as opportunistic.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey just want to take advantage of the humanitarian crisis Ceuta is currently experiencing,\u201d Ahmed said.<\/p>\n
Santiago Abascal, the leader of the far-right Vox party, visited Ceuta on Sunday, slamming the Spanish government for the surge in migrant arrivals, which he called \u201can invasion.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cThe frontiers of Ceuta and Melilla are the walls of our home and homeland, and they are not being protected by a corrupt and traitorous government,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Ceuta’s tradition of tolerance comes under strain<\/p>\n
Some locals, even acknowledging Ceuta’s population of Christians, Muslims, Jews and Hindus that normally live in relative harmony, worried about what the week revealed about the city.<\/p>\n
Eva Barrientos, a resident of Ceuta who works at a logistics company, came to the protest on Saturday evening to see what P\u00e9rez and the other right-wing figures had to say. She was confident that something similar would happen again and questioned the loyalty that some of Ceuta’s foreign-born residents had to Spain.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Ceuta, we have always lived together. We have four cultures living very well, without any problems,\u201d she said. \u201cBut the only thing we are realizing now is that there is an enemy within.\u201d <\/p>\n
And she accused some foreign-born residents of having more loyalty to Morocco than the country in which they lived. <\/p>\n
Pope Leo XIV on Sunday said he was \u201cfollowing with concern the alarming situation in Ceuta, asking God \u2026 that solutions of peace, stability and justice may be found.\u201d <\/p>\n
Migration has been one of Pope Leo\u2019s priorities, which he underlined during a recent visit to the Canary Islands<\/a> in Spain, one of Europe\u2019s main migrant entry ports.<\/p>\nCopyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CEUTA \u2013 Ceuta over the weekend no longer looked like a city on edge, but the events of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":799380,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,339407,451,3,339408,19431,339409,452,453,965],"class_list":["post-799379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-eva-barrientos","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-noor-ahmed","tag-pope-leo-xiv","tag-santiago-abascal","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=799379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/799380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=799379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=799379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=799379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}