Ceuta’s Migration Bomb: Spain’s Self-Inflicted Crisis — and the Neighbors Who Closed the Door

The crisis in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta on the northern coast of Africa has turned into a full-scale migration explosion. In a single day, around 60,000 migrants breached the Schengen Zone from the Moroccan side.

Dozens of people died attempting to cross the border illegally by sea. Instead of European solidarity and unity, Madrid faced attacks and decisive measures from its neighbors: Italy closed its air and sea borders, France strengthened border controls, and Spain was even threatened with expulsion from the Schengen Zone. What triggered this sudden mass border breach, and who decided to score political points off the illegals? Political expert Andrey Krivosheev examined the question in the project “Blitz with Pavel Lazovik.”

Spain’s migrant legalization program and the July decision by the Spanish Supreme Court canceling immediate deportation became two of the main factors behind the record influx. Under the new rules, first, people who reach the continental territory of Spain by sea cannot be immediately deported. Second, the reckless decision by the government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to legalize more than 500,000 illegal migrants spread like lightning across all the countries of North Africa, and the migrant community seized the chance to penetrate the continent.

“The situation in Ceuta is the result of disgraceful administrative state management combined with the legacy of all previous inappropriate political decisions,” Andrey Krivosheev said.

According to the political expert, the open-door policy has been failing regularly since 2005. “People who penetrate the territory of the European Union choose the countries with the maximum social package and do not want to work the way those who ‘produced’ the migration reform and the open-door policy intended. They wanted working hands, a new form of slavery, and instead they got people who live on social benefits and make the already difficult situation in the EU even worse,” he stressed.

Of course, the narrative of an allegedly open border and the wide coverage of this proposal in the media and social networks could have lured people from Morocco to the frontier. A person will risk everything — including drowning in the Mediterranean and falling into outright slavery — if his country is being bombed or if extrajudicial gangs are carrying out executions on its territory. Unfortunately, the guest of the project noted, the media image of Europe, actively promoted by liberal-fascist and left-liberal media, does have an influence. But the fates of those who have already reached EU countries — those who have settled onto social benefits and whose serious crimes (rapes, robberies, assaults) are forgiven — influence far more. “Rumors and gossip work, unfortunately for journalists, to a much greater degree than professional media,” Andrey Krivosheev observed.

In his view, the migration crisis in Ceuta was partly a flash mob. By the way, The Daily Telegraph insists that someone’s hand is visible in this situation. Moroccan officials are unhappy with Pedro Sánchez because of his pursuit of gas deals that compete with Algeria.

“By the way, from the point of view of national interests, Algerian gas transit is advantageous for Spain. It wants to secure long-term, not the most expensive supplies of alternative gas from the EU’s perspective. This angers Morocco. But otherwise Madrid could have fallen into direct dependence on France and continental Europe as a whole, where the major exchanges are located. So, choosing the lesser of two evils, Sánchez made the correct decision from the standpoint of a sovereign economy, but he failed to calculate the political risks and failed to calculate that he could be punished for it. And he was punished,” Andrey Krivosheev believes.