Everyone seems to be looking for a "solution" for Ceuta. A week ago, the Spanish government and the PP fully agreed on the idea of returning all immigrants who remained in the autonomous city. Also on prioritizing family reunification in the case of minors. The issue was that those who remained in Ceuta should also end up leaving. In fact, the trickle of returns has not stopped, police sources tell ARA, and some NGOs suspect that illegalities may have been committed among the first cases.

The exchange of recriminations is not an anomaly in Spanish politics. And Ceuta, which has been experiencing a humanitarian emergency for weeks, is no exception. Pedro Sánchez's government now accuses the PP of going to Ceuta to "further strain" the situation, while the Popular Party raises its tone against the central executive and its crisis management. This is being done by the PP leadership, with Alberto Núñez Feijóo at the helm, but also by the president of Ceuta, Juan Jesús Vivas (PP), who, a day after meeting with government spokesperson Elma Saiz, stated that they feel "abandoned" by the central executive, in statements to the media on Tuesday afternoon. Hours earlier, Feijóo also criticized that Pedro Sánchez's executive is "absent" and "indifferent" to the situation in Ceuta.

Eighteen days after the entry of tens of thousands of people from Morocco to Ceuta, the European Commission maintains its position on the future of migrants who remain in the autonomous city. The community executive has argued that all of them should be returned, including the more than two thousand minors who have entered without adult relatives and to whom community law and Spanish immigration law itself grant special protection. Brussels argues that European Union law also provides for them to be returned. "We continue to insist that the expectation is that all those who are irregularly in Ceuta will be returned," said the spokesman for the Internal Affairs commission, Markus Lammert, this Tuesday at a press conference.

The political clash over the situation in Ceuta escalates as the humanitarian crisis remains evident in the city. The tension between the government of Ceuta and Pedro Sánchez's executive has increased in volume after the president of the autonomous city, Juan Jesús Vivas (PP), threatened to go to court if Moncloa does not "solve" the crisis within 30 days. A path, currently unspecified, which has the support of Gènova, that has found in the migratory crisis a new vein to wear down Pedro Sánchez. Meanwhile, the Spanish government avoids a head-on confrontation, defending its actions and the "collaboration" between institutions, in the words of the government spokesperson and Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, Elma Saiz, who this Monday traveled to Ceuta for the first time since the entry of thousands of people on July 30, even though her responsibilities include ensuring a reception network for asylum seekers.

For a long time, Brazil has been an inexhaustible source of footballing talent. Some of the best foreign players who have passed through Barça in recent decades come from the nation that exports the most footballers to other countries in the world. According to the global report by CIES Football Observatory, this year 1,455 Brazilian professionals are playing far from their homeland. But this data does not include footballers of a lower profile, who play in semi-professional leagues and do not move millions. This is the case of three young men in their early twenties, evangelicals, born and raised in Brazil, who in the coming weeks will do their pre-season with the first team of UE Balàfia. The historic neighborhood club of Lleida needs to strengthen its squad for the upcoming season, which they will play in Primera Catalana after being promoted last campaign.

The Spanish government has assured that the safe return of Moroccan minors who entered irregularly into Ceuta on July 30 is a priority. However, with the law in hand, the repatriation of young people has special protection compared to the ordinary procedures applied to adults. In fact, in recent years, returns with biological families are the absolute exception and only occur in specific cases. Furthermore, according to the prosecution, none have been processed to Morocco "due to the lack of cooperation" from the Alawite authorities. Not going any further, in 2024 only eight children were repatriated: four from Colombia, three from Romania, and one from France.

The situation in Ceuta is far from normalizing. This is a message that social organizations and entities in the autonomous city, as well as its population, have been repeating for days. Fifteen days after tens of thousands of people entered swimming from Morocco, triggering a humanitarian emergency, the Elín Association of Ceuta is focusing on people's health and their care: "We are on the verge of a health crisis," warns Ramsés Mohamed, a social educator and spokesperson for Elín, in statements to ARA. "We are talking about people with illnesses and infections that cannot be treated," he adds. Many of the migrants who arrived in Ceuta did so with significant trauma after the sea crossing.

The PP is already putting obstacles in the way of the distribution of unaccompanied migrant minors in Ceuta. In the technical meeting with the Ministry of Childhood and Youth held this Thursday, it was agreed that the sectoral conference on childhood and adolescence to address this distribution among the autonomous communities would be held on August 27, but the Popular Party has refused to include on the agenda of this upcoming meeting an informational and debate point on, precisely, the care of these minors and their situation in Ceuta, according to ministry sources. Instead, the approval of an extraordinary credit of 25 million euros to expand resources for the care of minors would be voted on.

Just a few hours had passed since tens of thousands of migrants entered Ceuta, and the Spanish government was setting its sights on social networks. Pedro Sánchez's executive assured that these were the channels through which it had been amplified that the border between Morocco and the autonomous city was open and that the returns of people who entered swimming would not occur because the Supreme Court had so decreed. More than ten days later, the executive maintains the thesis: "[Social networks] They were the detonator. The vehicle that led thousands of people to Ceuta," stated the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, this Tuesday at a press conference from the autonomous city. Various investigations have detected content in these digital channels claiming success – not being expelled – if one swam from Morocco to Ceuta. Even maps with drawings representing the crossing.

“The first time I saw the sea was at night; and I, on board a raft with 124 people”. Born in a village in the interior of Senegal, Mamadou Sow (Tambacounda, 1991) landed in the summer of 2007 in El Hierro, in the Canary Islands, thanks to a tourist boat that spotted his adrift raft. He traveled from the capital, Dakar, with the help of an older brother, without the permission of his mother, the widow of his father. “In my village, everyone who had a house or a car had migrated to Europe or the United States”.

While in Ceuta they continue in a situation of humanitarian emergency hundreds of migrant people who entered swimming from Morocco on July 30, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, has been forceful regarding their future in the autonomous city: "Up to the last person who has entered [irregularly] will be returned," he said at a press conference this Tuesday, after meeting with the president of Ceuta, Juan Jesús Vivas (PP). In fact, Vivas demanded the "immediate return" of the migrants on Monday, but also the opening of a center for the internment of foreigners (CIE) for the "confinement" of the migrants while the expulsion is processed. Albares has not specified any timeframe.

If a straight line is drawn between the Comoros Islands, an archipelago located in the African strip of the Indian Ocean, and Ceuta, it measures 6,300 kilometers. By road, once you cross the sea, the shortest distance is about 8,000 kilometers. Hibbane (26 years old), one of the hundreds of young people who for more than ten days has taken refuge on the Trampolín beach in the autonomous city, was born there. With his finger, he points to the crest on the football jersey he is wearing: Fédération de Football des Comores. The language is one of the many legacies of colonization. "I fled because the political conflict is permanent [...] There are constant deaths," he explains. In recent years, these islands have left behind the small advances they had made as an incipient republican democracy. That is why he seeks international protection, although on Saturday, more than a week after arriving in Ceuta, he still had no news on how to request it.

The joint letter signed by the Prime Ministers of Italy and Denmark, Giorgia Meloni and Mette Frederiksen, in favor of creating deportation centers for immigrants in third countries is the latest episode of how European division and internal interests are eroding the European Union and turning migration policy into a political battleground between different European governments. Aside from the fact that it is deeply striking that the social democrat Frederiksen adopts the entire discourse of the extreme right on migration, from linking it to crime and sexual assault to the need to protect Christian culture, it is evident that this is a skillful move by Meloni in her confrontation with the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, following the Ceuta crisis and the decision by Rome – and later Madrid – to impose border controls on their respective citizens.

The PP has been forced to balance with Vox in the face of the humanitarian emergency situation in Ceuta. And the distribution of unaccompanied migrant minors who remain in the city since they entered swimming from Morocco is testing the complicity and understanding between Alberto Núñez Feijóo and Santiago Abascal. The far-right party announced on Saturday that its three vice-presidents with responsibilities in Childhood – in Extremadura, Aragon, and Castile and León – will not attend the meeting to be held on Thursday to begin addressing the distribution of minors. However, the PP will leave Vox alone because the regional ministries that depend on the Popular Party – in Andalusia, where there is also a coalition, and in the other seven territories where they govern alone – will attend the meeting.

Giorgia Meloni and Mette Frederiksen, two European prime ministers seemingly at political antipodes, are showcasing their common front against "uncontrolled immigration" in the European Union in a joint message released this Monday on social media, in which they call for a tougher stance and advocate for the creation of repatriation centers in third countries. The two leaders emphasize that they have led a strict migratory policy, both in their countries and across Europe, with the argument that "no one can deny that illegal immigration has a negative impact" on European societies: "Increased crime rates, increased pressure on public services, and erosion of public trust."

In Ceuta, four religions coexist: Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and Hindu. However, the population is largely divided between those who share a Christian faith and those who share a Muslim faith. On the street, it is easy to hear Spanish and darija. This is the first example of where and how this Spanish enclave in North Africa was established. The humanitarian crisis it is currently experiencing, stemming from the arrival of thousands of people swimming from Morocco, which has so far resulted in the deaths of 141 people on both sides of the borders, according to NGO figures, has led to an almost exceptional event: a gathering that has united the four religious communities and took place this Sunday afternoon in Constitution Square.

Fàtima (Tétouan, 34 years old) approaches a group of women while touching her belly. She is six months pregnant. Until now she hadn't had many discomforts – "I was calm," she says as she looks at her belly – but since she arrived in Ceuta things have changed and she feels the baby every day. She threw herself into the sea, with the physical risks that this entails, to flee Morocco, where she does not want to return in any way. We communicate thanks to Jadira, a woman of Moroccan origin who has lived in Ceuta for many years.“Do you have family in Morocco?”

The figure of the president of Ceuta, Juan Jesús Vivas, was not familiar to me, but I must say that his reaction to the dramatic situation he found himself in has impressed me very favorably because it has been characterized by the two traits that are what should inform European immigration policy: realism and empathy.

Approaching the El Tarajal border, which separates Ceuta from Morocco, these days means seeing more military personnel and Civil Guard agents than usual. Also, the maritime containment barrier installed by the Spanish government after the entry of thousands of people on Thursday, July 30th. Or that mobile phone coverage starts to fail.

A few pallets serve as a stage; there is a microphone stand in the center. The speaker is Aleksandr Lukashenko, addressing thousands of migrants stranded at the border between Belarus and Poland: "If you want to go west, we will not stop you, we will not strangle you, nor will we beat you." They applaud him. "It is up to you. Go ahead. Go there," insists the Belarusian president. The scene is not new; it is almost five years old, but it continues to be highlighted as one of the most obvious cases of the instrumentalization of migration as part of the so-called hybrid war against the European Union. The use of migrants as a weapon to achieve political objectives has intensified in Europe following Russia's war against Ukraine and also due to the growth of anti-immigration discourse, which makes this strategy increasingly attractive to actors seeking to exert pressure.