Police report contradicts Spanish government line on Ceuta crisis

 

Police report contradicts Spanish government line on Ceuta crisis

 

Spanish intelligence unit tells judge Moroccan officers guided July mass crossing as Sánchez blamed social-media rumours and foreign actors

 

EUalive with agencies

September 2, 2026

15:20

https://eualive.net/police-report-contradicts-spanish-government-line-on-ceuta-crisis/

 

A confidential report from Spain’s National Police intelligence unit has told a judge that the July 30–31 mass crossing into Ceuta was organised and directed on the ground by Moroccan gendarmes and plainclothes agents, not a spontaneous surge triggered by online rumours.

 

The document, prepared by the Centro Nacional de Inmigración y Fronteras (CENIF) and delivered to Audiencia Nacional judge María Tardón, describes the arrival of roughly 72,000 people as a planned operation. Migration served as cover, the report states, for an effort to overwhelm Spanish border controls. Moroccan uniformed gendarmes directed crowds from Castillejos toward the El Tarajal breakwater while plainclothes officers issued instructions, according to the analysis, which includes photographs and video. About 90 percent of those who entered returned to Morocco within hours.

 

The findings clash with the account given by Pedro Sánchez’s government. After initially calling the events an “attack on Spain’s territorial integrity,” the prime minister later attributed the surge to misinformation circulating on social media about a Supreme Court ruling that restricted immediate “hot returns” of people arriving by sea. Sánchez pointed to human-trafficking networks and to amplification by accounts linked to Russia, Israel and far-right groups. He simultaneously praised Morocco’s cooperation in returning most of the arrivals.

 

The European External Action Service subsequently said it had found no conclusive evidence that foreign-state disinformation caused the crisis, although it noted Russian efforts to exploit the episode online after it had begun.

 

CENIF had issued “extreme risk” alerts on 28 and 29 July warning of coordinated swimming and fence-jumping attempts. Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska has now written to the director general of the Police asking when the service obtained the information contained in the report sent to the judge. Tardón had instructed the police not to circulate the document beyond her court.

 

The discrepancy between the government’s public explanation and the intelligence now before the Audiencia Nacional leaves open questions about what Madrid knew, when it knew it, and how it chose to describe the largest single-day border breach in Ceuta’s history.

 

The motivations of the Moroccan government remain unclear: whether the operation was intended simply to create difficulties for Spain, or formed part of a broader strategy to discourage Madrid from holding on to its North African exclaves. The discrepancy between the government’s public explanation and the intelligence now before the Audiencia Nacional leaves open questions about what Madrid knew, when it knew it, and how it chose to describe the largest single-day border breach in Ceuta’s history.