Pedro Sánchez asked for an urgent EU meeting after more than 50,000 people crossed from Morocco into Ceuta on Thursday and Friday, pushing immigration to Spain into a political crisis response inside the EU. Spain’s prime minister said most of the people who crossed had already been sent back by Friday evening.
At least 67 people died in the attempt, and more than 48,000 people had voluntarily returned to Morocco by 6pm on Friday. Sánchez said the returns were aimed at “preventing any unauthorised onward movement towards continental Europe,” a line that places Ceuta and Spain’s other north African enclave under special Schengen rules.
Pedro Sánchez and the EU response
Sánchez sent a letter to Ursula von der Leyen, António Costa and Micheál Martin, calling the reaction from some EU countries “selfish, polarising and unlawful.” He said Spain was one of the least porous external borders of the European Union according to Frontex, and he pressed for an urgent meeting of EU interior ministers.
The immediate practical consequence is that Spain is now trying to turn a border emergency into a European institutional question. For people who crossed into Ceuta and were returned to Morocco, the issue is not just the pace of returns but whether the EU treats the enclave as a border exception or as part of a wider migration pressure point.
Italy and Spain dispute blame
Italy moved the dispute further on Friday evening by announcing that it would suspend its Schengen arrangements with Spain. Antonio Tajani blamed the situation in Ceuta on Spain’s now-closed scheme to regularise the status of more than 1 million undocumented migrants and asylum seekers, calling that policy “profoundly wrong.”
José Manuel Albares rejected that line, calling Tajani’s comments “unbecoming” and accusing Italy of “partisan demagoguery.” The exchange turned the Ceuta crossings into a broader argument over whether border pressure should be read as a failure of Spanish policy or as a test of EU solidarity at the external edge of the bloc.
Ireland's Saturday crisis meeting
Ireland’s presidency convened a political crisis response team meeting for Saturday, giving the dispute a formal EU channel after the political fight had already widened. The sequence now runs from the crossings themselves to the returns, then to the ministers’ meeting Spain wants and the crisis-response gathering Ireland is due to host.
Whether the urgent EU meeting of interior ministers is ultimately held, and whether it produces any common line on Ceuta and Schengen, is the next step that will show if the EU can answer a border shock with a shared position.
