THE NEW YORK TIMES: 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.
Like so many others in Morocco, Mohammed Ahmidho saw on his social media feeds early Thursday that the heavily guarded border his country shared with the Spanish territory of Ceuta was open.
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. » | Jason Horowitz | Reporting from Ceuta, Spain | Saturday, August 1, 2026
