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Ceuta: The Migration Card, the Latest Weapon Against Sánchez

Some coincidences, through sheer repetition, stop being coincidences. This Thursday, July 30th, on Morocco's Throne Day, several hundred migrants forced their way into Ceuta by swimming across the border, leaving at least nine dead and forcing Madrid to deploy military reinforcements. On paper, a tragic incident among many others on a border that has been under strain since the start of the year. In practice, the episode comes exactly ten days after Pedro Sánchez's visit to Algiers, a trip designed to settle years of estrangement with Algeria — and perceived in Rabat as a genuine diplomatic provocation.




I don't believe in the coincidence of calendars in foreign policy, least of all where Morocco and the migration question are concerned. Rabat has already shown, notably during the 2021 crisis, its ability to loosen or tighten the migratory tap according to its diplomatic interests. This isn't a theoretical hypothesis: it's a proven method, a language the Makhzen masters better than anyone. That this language would resurface just days after a Spanish-Algerian rapprochement that runs against its interests strikes me as anything but accidental.

What makes the episode more troubling still is how it dovetails with Sánchez's domestic political situation. Spain's prime minister enters this crisis already weakened, caught in a crossfire between Vox — whose Ceuta representative, Juan Sergio Redondo, immediately demanded his resignation along with that of his interior minister — and Donald Trump, who has spent recent days publicly attacking Spain's handling of migration and diplomatic affairs. Whether or not it was intended, Rabat's choice to let pressure build at Ceuta at precisely this moment serves the converging interests of both actors: humiliating Sánchez on the very terrain where he is structurally most vulnerable, and feeding the narrative of a government overwhelmed by events.

Some will object that the rise in arrivals has been documented since January, well before the Algiers trip, and that no intelligence service, no government, has formally established a link between these three elements — Morocco, Trump, and Sánchez's engineered downfall. That's correct, and intellectual honesty requires acknowledging it: none of this is proven in any judicial or diplomatic sense. But the absence of formal proof doesn't erase the coherence of the picture. In politics, intentions are never signed; they are read in the convergence of interests and the timing of events. And that timing, in this case, speaks for itself.

If this reading is correct, Sánchez faces today far more than a humanitarian crisis on his southern border: a political pincer where a Moroccan neighbor irritated by his Algerian rapprochement, a Spanish far right waiting for any pretext to finish him off, and a US administration that has made him a target, each converge for their own reasons. What remains to be seen is how long a government can hold when the border itself becomes a weapon in the hands of its adversaries.


Belgacem Merbah

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