The situation in Ceuta is not the result of any “migratory crisis”, as the left maintains, nor of a “sovereignty crisis”, as the right affirms. These two readings — one focused on the humanitarian drama; the other, on border pressure — are ideological and convenient interpretations. They do not take into account demographic dysfunction: the structural fracture between two realities advancing at completely different paces. On one side of the border, the risible birth rates in Spain and other European countries, such as Italy; on the other, the fertility of some regions of the Maghreb (4.63 children per woman in Mauritania, for example). Ceuta is, in this sense, a tense point of contact between two demographic systems that can no longer balance themselves. Everyone knows how tectonic plates work (we've had a few examples this summer): there comes a point when, underground, friction and pressure eventually generate an earthquake.In Spain, the fertility rate has remained below replacement level for decades. There is an accelerated aging, with an age structure that tends towards contraction and requires migratory flows to sustain the labor market, the pension system, and even the most basic social vitality. In Morocco, on the other hand, despite the significant decline in recent years (even more pronounced in Tunisia), the birth rate remains high compared to European standards, and the demographic pyramid is expansive. The average fertility rate in the Maghreb is 2.86 children per woman; in Spain, it is 1.10, and with an average age of maternity of 32.6 years, one of the highest in the world. This asymmetry generates an inevitable pressure: a young, abundant population, often without solid economic prospects, looks towards a neighboring country that continues to be fantastically perceived as a space of opportunities.Due to its condition as a physical and symbolic border, Ceuta has become the showcase for this tension. When thousands of young people crossed the border a month ago, they were not experiencing a "migratory crisis" in the classic sense, nor an attack on Spanish sovereignty, nor an invasion. They were corroborating in an abrupt, but non-violent, way the relentless logic of the imbalance that has been developing for decades in that precise context (it doesn't have to be this way in others). Administrations can try to contain it with honeyed speeches or threatening fences, but the underlying vector is subterranean: the difference between societies that are growing in population but not in resources, and societies where the opposite is happening.

Yes, it was a baby boomBut it's already deflating. I'm not writing. bluff not in the sense of disappointment or failure, but referring to a generation that is beginning to deflate as it begins (in fact, it has already begun) its withdrawal from the labor market.