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The autonomous city of Ceuta has ground to a halt following the mass arrival of migrants from Morocco. Most shops remained closed on Friday, fresh bread was becoming difficult to find and the Ceuta government suspended this weekend’s patron saint festivities as authorities struggled to regain control of the situation.
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As AFP observed on the ground, the usual bustle of the central Calle Real has given way to groups of migrants gathered in the streets, while the shutters of many businesses remain down. In the city centre, home to around 84,000 people, only a handful of pharmacies and a restaurant belonging to a well-known chain were open.
The Ceuta Business Confederation has advised shops and other businesses not to reopen “until security can be guaranteed”, amid continuing uncertainty and the deployment of additional security forces.
Health sector sources contacted by Euronews said medical services were under severe pressure despite reinforcements being called in. The most common cases being treated include hypothermia, anxiety attacks and fractures.
“We are running out of bread. There was no fresh bread today because the bakeries are closed,” municipal street sweeper Miguel Ángel Campana told AFP. He said some residents feared migrants could try to enter homes “asking for water and other things” and urged neighbours to “keep an eye on their balconies”. Across the city, migrants could be seen stopping passing vehicles to ask for food, money or to borrow mobile phones to contact their families.
Local authorities estimate that around 60,000 people have crossed irregularly from Morocco into Ceuta since the early hours of Thursday, many swimming around the border breakwater. The Spanish government says more than 37,500 have already returned to Morocco.
Police have been directing large groups of migrants, many of them young people, towards the border crossing to facilitate their return. The crisis has also triggered an intense political and diplomatic response, with the army deployed in Ceuta and several European countries criticising the way the situation has been handled.
“It remains a heartbreaking situation from a humanitarian point of view, seeing so many people with nowhere to go, without food or water, because the few services available for them are completely overwhelmed,” a Ceuta resident interviewed by Euronews said.
At the same time, concern among residents is growing.Mohammed, a taxi driver from Ceuta, believes many migrants have decided to return to Morocco after seeing the conditions awaiting them in the city.”They thought they knew what they were going to find here and they have been confronted with reality,” he told AFP. Some had told him they were returning “because they had no food”.
“There is nothing here. Those of us who are from here are struggling to get by. We are having a hard time,” he added.
Mohammed said he and other neighbours stayed awake until the early hours of the morning for fear of possible robberies. “I have nieces who are afraid,” he said.
That sense of unease is shared by 56-year-old Yolanda Moreno, who said she had felt “afraid from the start” of the migration crisis. “It was like during the pandemic: the feeling that it was better to stay at home than to go out onto the streets,” she told AFP.
Another resident interviewed by Euronews also expressed concern that tensions could escalate, saying people increasingly feared violence. “This morning I was shocked to see people from here, from the neighbourhood, with lots of knives, trying to take justice into their own hands,” she said. “I just saw one boy with a katana running after a Moroccan boy, without really knowing what was going on.”
The scale of the crisis has forced the Ceuta government to cancel the patron saint festivities that were due to begin on Saturday. At the fairground, rides remain covered with tarpaulins and motionless — a striking symbol of a city whose normal rhythm has been brought to a halt as it struggles to cope with one of the largest migrant arrivals in its history.
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