This week, Ceuta’s president Juan Jesús Vivas spent 48 hours in Brussels because “the national government [in Madrid] has failed to live up to what was required of it,” he told the press at the European Parliament.
The leader of Spain’s north African enclave, a member of the dominant EU Parliament centre-right European People’s party (EPP), hasn’t skipped any chance to remind the public of Madrid’s mishandling of Ceuta’s mass-migration emergency.
While over 80,000 people arrived on the shores of the small autonomous city on 30 and 31 July 2026, Sanchez’s government tried to cope with such copious arrivals with extra funding, reinforced border patrolling and surveillance technology, as well as with discussions on relocations in the country and housing for minors.
And although responses from Pedro Sánchez’s government have overall clearly fallen short of what is needed, it only took one day before Sánchez, the Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) head, had to expressly request a show of solidarity from the EU – as Schengen’s doors closed on Spain.
On 1 August, Sánchez wrote a letter to commission president Ursula von der Leyen in light of the EU’s “selfish, polarising and unlawful reaction,” to the crisis. On the same day, 22 EU leaders raised “serious concern” over the threat to the EU’s border and criticised Spain’s migration policy, with a special mention to Madrid’s regularisation programme for migrants.
