Police told the court that Moroccan gendarmes led the incursion into Ceuta. Sánchez, for his part, attributed the rumors to Russian and Israeli networks.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez returned to the microphone after a month without public appearances and for the first time named who, according to him, was behind the mass entry into Ceuta at the end of July. He claims that behind the rumors that contributed to the entry were accounts and networks with ties to Russia and Israel plus an "ultra-right international," and he refers to findings from the European Union's diplomatic service. He explicitly ruled out any responsibility of Moroccan authorities — at a time when Morocco claimed Ceuta three times within days, which is unprecedented since Mohamed VI ascended to the throne in 1999. Since then, a response came from Brussels: the European Union claims that conclusive evidence of a Russian disinformation campaign behind the Ceuta crisis does not exist. Since then, two things happened that further undermined the PM's version: the Civil Guard is preparing a report for the judge that identifies Moroccan intelligence members among the attackers, and hundreds of thousands took to the streets against the government. By evening, Monday's accusation collapsed in two places at once: the PM softened it and his own evidence about summoning the Moroccan ambassador did not hold up.

What the PM said and what he based it on

On Monday morning, in Spain's most-listened-to radio station Cadena SER, Sánchez said that false reports about Ceuta were spread by accounts on social media "with ties to Russia and Israel" and, in addition, an "international far-right movement." What is crucial is what he based this claim on: according to him, findings from the European Service for External Action, the EU's diplomatic apparatus, pointed to these actors. Spiegel ↗

The content of that rumor was concrete. According to Germany's public broadcaster Tagesschau, claims were spread that migrants who reached Ceuta by swimming would be able to stay in Spain. The Berlin newspaper taz adds that in Moroccan networks and Facebook and messenger groups, in the days before July 30, the message circulated that the border with Spain was open. Tagesschau ↗ taz ↗

The PM named the motive directly: according to him, those two countries were not interested in migrants, but in the fact that Spain labeled Israeli actions in Gaza as genocide and condemned Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine. In the same interview, however, he admitted that the government "unfortunately" does not have "precise knowledge" of what actually happened. It was precisely this pair of sentences — the named culprit and the admitted uncertainty — that became the target of everything that followed. On Thursday, Sánchez stood before Congress and rejected the police report. At an extraordinary session called to address the crisis, he denied Moroccan involvement despite police findings and declared that he had no firm evidence of it. He claimed that no government institution, diplomacy, or the European Commission had warned him before the entry. Politico Europe ↗ It was his first appearance before MPs since the end of July. At the same time, he linked the crisis to the question of sovereignty for the first time — Ceuta and Melilla, according to him, would remain Spanish forever — and announced that Spain would ask the European Union for help monitoring migration and for permanent protection of the city. TASR ↗ Hospodárske noviny ↗ ČT24 ↗

Answers came within hours

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar wrote on network X that Sánchez "once again lied when he shockingly accused Israel of spreading misleading information about events in Ceuta". He continued that "further spreading of slanderous lies will not divert attention from Sánchez's shameful failure in governing his own country". elDiario.es ↗

Moscow rejected any role in the crisis, as newspaper La Repubblica reported that same day. The Russian side had previously labeled similar accusations as baseless constructions. La Repubblica ↗

At home, things went no better for the prime minister. Spokesperson for the opposition People's Party Borja Sémper said that Sánchez "has slipped into conspiratorial thinking" — pointing to Israel, Russia and Elon Musk while justifying Morocco, so he "only lacked accusing France". The People's Party also joined as an intervening party in the proceedings that the Spanish National Court (Audiencia Nacional) is conducting regarding the events in Ceuta, and its chairman Alberto Núñez Feijóo is traveling to the city on Wednesday, the day before the prime minister is due to answer in Congress. El Mundo ↗

The only excluded one is the only one who claims the city

Sánchez spoke about Morocco in superlatives. He described the cooperation as "immediate and direct", noted that by July 31 Moroccan military deployment could already be seen near the border city of Fnideq, and concluded that there is "no information from security forces, from intelligence services or from any intelligence center that would indicate the involvement of Moroccan authorities in any form". El Mundo ↗

But French Mediapart on the same day counted something different: Morocco's claim over Ceuta was raised by Moroccan officials three times within a few days, which according to the newspaper is a record — since Mohammed VI ascended to the throne in July 1999, top Moroccan officials had not officially made this claim even once. That is a layer we analyzed before in an article about how Madrid did not invite the Moroccan ambassador despite the claims. Mediapart ↗

Police told the court that the jump into Ceuta on July 30 and 31 was planned and led by Moroccan gendarmes — and the purpose was not migratory. According to the report received by the investigating judge, they acted on the orders of plainclothes agents. This is a fundamental change in framing: from migratory pressure it becomes a directed operation of a foreign state. Yet the Spanish government the day before spoke of disinformation networks and specifically omitted Morocco. (El Mundo ↗, El Español ↗)

The Civil Guard is completing a second report for the judge and it already names members of Moroccan intelligence. Police added a profile of them: "men, athletic and dressed in polo shirts" — in other words, people who did not fit in among swimmers. The first report speaks of "complete leniency, instructions on where to swim and minimal police presence" on the Moroccan side. (ABC ↗, ABC ↗, ABC ↗)

Two intelligence reports had warned ministers Robles and Marlaska before the entry. According to El Mundo they spoke of "massive entry" and "immediate collapse", so the question shifts from who caused the crisis to why the government did not prepare for it. (El Mundo ↗)

Among the migrants from the Ceuta 'invasion' they uncovered recruiters for Daesh jihadists and the court opened proceedings against the government delegate in Ceuta over reports from intelligence service CNI. (ABC ↗, ABC ↗)

From a political dispute it became a nationwide protest. According to El Mundo, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets "to defend Ceuta", police dispersed a gathering in front of Congress with four arrests and four injured officers, and today according to El Mundo Sánchez faces the harshest confrontation of his term — people from his own government have also opposed the pro-Moroccan version. A poll shows that the majority of Spaniards believe the police and think the prime minister is concealing information. (El Mundo ↗, La Vanguardia ↗, El Mundo ↗, El Confidencial ↗)

What is documented and what is not

• 01.09.The European Union did not confirm Sánchez's version: convincing evidence that Russian disinformation campaign caused the Ceuta crisis does not exist according to it. Yet the Prime Minister was citing precisely the findings of the European diplomatic service. Conservative ABC makes another foreign policy crisis out of it — writes that Sánchez opened a new front with accusations against Russia and Israel while dealing with Ceuta at home. eldiario.es ↗, ABC ↗

That part of the Prime Minister's claim which sounds most conspiratorial has publicly traceable echoes in older statements and commentaries — but not proof of organizing the July entry. Berlin's taz recalls that Ceuta and Melilla were already topics in the circles around Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump months before the July entry. Yair Netanyahu, son of the Israeli prime minister, wrote on Twitter in May 2019: "Dear Arabs and Muslims, do you want to liberate occupied Arab Islamic territories? Here's a good start!" — and attached a map of both Spanish enclaves. taz ↗

More concrete is the American case, which we can read in the original. Michael Rubin, former Pentagon official and senior fellow at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute, published on March 16, 2026 — that is, four and a half months before the July entry — a commentary with a title that needs no interpretation: Morocco should send a new Green March to Ceuta and Melilla. The text appeared on the institute's website and on the Middle East Forum portal. In it he recommends that Moroccans gather, send bulldozers to the border and enter both cities unarmed to raise the flag, following the example of the march in 1975, when about 350,000 unarmed people entered Western Sahara. American Enterprise Institute ↗

For the Slovak reader, Rubin's second premise is significant: that Spain could not invoke its allies. For Ceuta and Melilla this legal reasoning holds. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty defines the territory to which collective defense applies as Europe and North America, French departments in Algeria, Turkey and islands in the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer — and Ceuta and Melilla lie in Africa, thus outside. North Atlantic Treaty ↗ However, Rubin also adds the Canary Islands to his calculation, which is not true: they are island territory north of the Tropic of Cancer, thus covered. The then Secretary General of the Alliance Jens Stoltenberg explained this the same way in 2022 and added that the activation of collective defense is ultimately a political decision of the allies. The Diplomat in Spain ↗

But none of this proves that the same actors organized the July entry or directed the disinformation wave. It is documented that the idea of a march on Ceuta is published in American conservative circles and that Yair Netanyahu expressed himself about Spanish enclaves as far back as 2019. Between that and Sánchez's accusation there remains a gap that the government has not yet filled.

The Government Argued With Itself

The government responded to the police dossier by questioning its authors. According to ABC, government circles speak of a "judicial conspiracy," discredit the police report, and protect the police chief who exonerates Rabat from any involvement; El Mundo describes the Interior Ministry's response as its own disinformation operation. Sánchez's former advisor Iván Redondo speaks bluntly, saying that "the government's story about that report falls apart." (ABC ↗, El Mundo ↗, ABC ↗)

The sharpest objections came from their own camp. Spokesperson of the Sumar coalition and Culture Minister Ernest Urtasun said that Morocco bears responsibility "by action or omission," because it is a country that has its border "very much under control" whenever it wants. Coordinator of the United Left Antonio Maíllo was more severe: "In Morocco, not a leaf moves without its intelligence service, its government, its gendarmes knowing about it." El Mundo ↗

The numbers also diverged. Sánchez said in the morning that five thousand people remained in Ceuta, including 1,200 unaccompanied minors. A few hours later, Youth and Childhood Minister Sira Rego estimated in Congress 1,478 minors in care facilities and an estimate of approximately another 1,200 who still needed to be identified — thus nearly 2,700 in total. She proposed opening five hundred places on the peninsula for the most vulnerable. El Español ↗

The dispute extended to the regions. The expected relocation of minors to other autonomous communities forced the first revision of the coalition agreement between the People's Party and Vox in Andalusia, signed barely a month earlier. elDiario.es ↗

After the prime minister's speech, the most eloquent silence was from his defense minister. Margarita Robles was the only government member who did not applaud and remained sitting. She is also the only one who continues to claim that intelligence services warned before the mass influx. El Mundo ↗ Coalition partners, meanwhile, took apart the government version: Sumar and main allies called the events an attack and an operation to destabilize Spain and accused the government of responding to such a thing with lies or averting its gaze. Gabriel Rufián warned the prime minister of the danger of lying and, with reference to the handling of the Madrid attacks of 2004, concluded that the current version would not hold. El Mundo ↗

Still that day the prime minister softened the accusation from Monday. While on Monday he claimed that disinformation campaigns on networks "with ties to Russia and Israel" fueled the surge, on Thursday he spoke of it more cautiously. Regarding Morocco, he repeated that he had no evidence of its active participation. (n-tv ↗)

The evidence he used to defend himself fell apart within hours. Sánchez stated publicly in Congress for the first time that Spain had summoned Moroccan Ambassador Karima Benyaich on August 21st to lodge a protest. But the ambassador was not in Spain that day — the chargé d'affaires received the protest, which reduced the political weight of the entire gesture. Moreover, the government kept the summons secret for nearly two weeks and had meanwhile publicly defended Morocco as a "loyal partner." (El Español ↗, ABC ↗)

To that were added two pressures from outside and within. Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska sent a protest letter to the Judicial Council against Judge Tardón, who had denied him access to the Ceuta report, and from Washington came a call from Donald Trump: according to him, Spain is heading toward being a "ruined country" due to migration, and he called the surge on Ceuta "very sad" with the addition that he had not seen anything like it. Thursday evening, thousands of people took to the streets in Madrid and in Ceuta itself against the government. (ABC ↗, El Español ↗, Spiegel ↗)

This is the last update to this article. The crisis shifted over five waves from the question of who organized the surge to the question of what the government knew about it and when it said so — and that is already a different story that will get its own text. Future developments can be found in a separate article, not here.

How It Looks in the City Itself

• 01.09.The government approved 309 million euros for Ceuta; the city's representative Vivas says that without repatriations they are worthless. An increasing number of Socialist mayors are not following orders from central command and will go to gatherings about Ceuta, and Miriam Andrés calls on protesting cities to share the burden of minors. Portuguese Expresso writes about a crisis within the crisis: nearly one sexual assault per day occurs in the city. ABC ↗, ABC ↗, Expresso ↗

Ceuta has around 83,000 inhabitants and an area smaller than Frankfurt Airport. According to Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska, approximately 72,000 people swam around or climbed over the fence on July 30th and 31st, though Sánchez himself and the opposition speak of 80,000. Most returned within hours, and according to the prime minister, a further 3,222 people have returned "voluntarily" since August 10th. ABC ↗

Meanwhile, according to the Spanish press, the city is operating like a pressure cooker. The local newspaper El Faro de Ceuta speaks of an emotional roller coaster in which "day after day, outrage, fear, and helplessness settle." On August 27th, a group of residents, after an anti-government gathering, set fire to temporary beds and migrants' belongings in a camp on El Trampolín Beach and shortly before had prevented Red Cross volunteers from distributing food there. The conservative El Español, which condemned those scenes, also points out the throwing of stones at police officers by migrants. Courrier International ↗

The prosecutor's office is currently investigating twenty-three cases of sexual assault, five of which involve rape. Nine victims are minors between fourteen and seventeen years old, and all are migrant women; one of the victims belongs to the LGBTI community. Eight suspects have been identified so far — four Moroccans, three Spanish nationals, and one Belgian; security forces do not know the rest of the attackers. Yet last week, Attorney General Teresa Peramato was speaking of sixteen attacks. La Vanguardia ↗

The bill for the month is tallied. The Ceuta Chamber of Commerce raised its estimate of direct damages to 33,038,768 euros, that is, 19 percent more than originally. Commerce saw average sales decline by 53 percent, the hospitality sector by 50.7 percent, and tourism by 90 percent, with no recovery in August. Jornal de Negócios ↗

The government countered with money. Sánchez announced a package of 168 million euros, which according to him corresponds to roughly eight percent of the enclave's gross domestic product, and on Tuesday the cabinet is to approve a special authority for Ceuta. NRK ↗

A Consequence That Even Slovak Travelers Will Feel

The crisis has meanwhile escalated into an intra-European dispute. Italy extended controls on passengers coming from Spain by another fifteen days — they don't share a land border, so it's about flights and ships — and Spain responded with the same measures against passengers from Italy. Tagesschau adds a note worth reading carefully: there is no evidence that even one migrant from Ceuta set out for Italy — they were not allowed to reach the Spanish mainland. Critics therefore view Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's measure as domestic political symbolism. Tagesschau ↗

Sánchez also announced that King Philip VI will visit Ceuta, for the first time in twenty years, though he did not specify a date — he is to come "when conditions permit." The People's Party demands that this happen before Morocco's parliamentary elections on September 23rd, and that the prime minister accompany the king.

Limits of this perspective

We are composing a picture from Spanish press, which is deeply divided on this matter along political lines — conservative ABC, El Mundo and El Español systematically pursue the government, left-wing elDiario.es and Público lean toward it, so the same numbers get a different angle in every headline. German and French sources are more distant from the dispute, but in turn work with what Spanish media provides them.

More importantly is what no one has yet substantiated. The Prime Minister's accusation of a Russian and Israeli disinformation campaign is a claim by the Spanish government based on findings of the European diplomatic service, whose wording is not public. Israel denies it, Russia does too. Equally undocumented is the claim of the opposition and part of the coalition that Morocco knew about the movement of tens of thousands of people. The timing also remains open: according to German media, rumors of an open border circulated in the days before July 30, while the Prime Minister himself spoke of disinformation spreading after July 30 and 31. The difference between a trigger and an amplifier is precisely what an investigation should determine.

What we are monitoring

The Prime Minister is to answer for the crisis at an extraordinary Congress session on Thursday, September 3. The day before, the opposition leader travels to Ceuta and in the evening hours, gatherings are held outside town halls throughout Spain.

We are monitoring whether the Spanish government will disclose or at least summarize the findings of the European diplomatic service on which it based its accusation.

We are monitoring how September 23 will unfold — Moroccan parliamentary elections, which the People's Party considers a reason to accelerate a royal visit.

We are monitoring whether the chain of internal Schengen controls between Italy and Spain will be interrupted after fifteen days or extended further.

We are monitoring whether the government will settle on a single figure for unaccompanied minors and whether some of them will be relocated to the mainland.