Mint surged into Ceuta this week as Morocco loosened border controls and more than 50,000 people entered the Spanish enclave. Youssef El Abbas, a 44-year-old Moroccan father of four, was among them after swimming across on Wednesday and reaching Spanish soil by 3pm.
Youssef El Abbas in Moroccan waters
El Abbas said about 400 people had swum from Morocco to Ceuta before he decided to travel. He had been deported from Spain in 2019 after his residency expired when he lost his job in Bilbao, then took a taxi to Tétouan and another to Fnideq before heading for the border. At 2.45pm on Wednesday, he reached the frontier; by 3pm, he was across.
He described the scene in stark terms: “Young men were running through the streets, flooding every corner”. Near the border, he said, “The Moroccan police were shouting at us: ‘Go, go, go! Run now, run into Spain,’” and added, “The night before, they were beating people. But that morning they were letting us through. Nothing made sense.”
Ceuta and the 50,000 crossings
Ceuta lies about 12 miles, or 19km, across the strait of Gibraltar from mainland Spain, and this week’s surge put huge pressure on the enclave in a matter of days. El Abbas said, “All the sub-Saharan migrants were being pushed back by force.” That split in treatment shaped who got through and who did not, with Moroccans allowed over while sub-Saharan migrants were driven back.
He also said, “In just 10 minutes in the water, I saw four people floating dead in Moroccan waters”. The wider toll was at least 72 people drowned or crushed while trying to reach Spanish territory. In May 2021, Rabat loosened border controls and allowed 10,000 people to cross into Ceuta over two days, a smaller surge than the one seen this week.
Spain, Morocco and mint tension
Pedro Sánchez called the influx “a violation of Spain’s territorial integrity”, while Madrid said human-trafficking mafias were behind it. A separate complication runs through the same events: Spain's supreme court recently ruled that people intercepted at sea while trying to enter Ceuta or Melilla could not be summarily returned under special rules, which narrows how authorities can respond once someone is in the water or at sea.
Karima Benyaich Millán said “Rabat was not happy about the mass crossing” and said “it hoped those in Ceuta would return”. Moroccan government sources told Europa Press that the surge was down to criminal organisations and said Rabat's cooperation with Spain remained exemplary. The unresolved issue now is whether the crossing was driven mainly by trafficking networks and crowd pressure, or by a deliberate opening at the border for diplomatic reasons.
