As the afternoon draws to a close, the 2,000 or so migrants living in tents or makeshift lean-tos on Trampolín beach make their way to its eastern end. Police form them into groups of 30 or so, squatting on the ground, as they wait for a daily meal provided by the Red Cross. It is six weeks since more than 70,000 migrants surged across the border from Morocco into Ceuta, a Spanish exclave on the North African coast, and up to 10,000 are still there.
“We are waiting for a solution,” says Abdel Karim, a solderer from Tangier. “We all want to go to the mainland to work. A dozen other young men around him, all Moroccans bar one Algerian, concur.
Ceuta’s 84,000 residents are still waiting. After 63,000 migrants trekked back across the border within days of entering Spain, press reports wrongly estimated only a few thousand remained. It took direct charge, as Ceuta’s mayor had urged, and promised 6,000 places for migrants in tent camps; more than half have been set up. It has also announced aid for the city of up to €309m ($360m).
That’s Morocco’s strategy,” says Carlos Rontomé, who directs the local branch of the national distance-learning university. Mr Sánchez went off on three weeks’ holiday. Only in late August did the government do what many demanded from the start. Despite a police report detailing how Moroccan security forces encouraged the migrants, Mr Sánchez has been oddly reluctant to criticise his neighbour. Morocco has long claimed sovereignty over Ceuta and many Spaniards see the surge as a tactic of hybrid war. Locals were heartened when tens of thousands demonstrated across Spain in solidarity with Ceuta on September 2nd. But if Spain wants to keep the city viable, it will have to do more. “Many young people are rethinking whether to stay here or make their life elsewhere.
“We’ve treated hundreds and hundreds of migrants each day,” says Elisabeth Muñoz, who heads the nurses’ union at the hospital. Meanwhile, she says, Ceutans are cancelling medical appointments for fear of infection. Life for Ceutans has become deeply unpleasant. Hundreds of migrants sleep in the street in front of the city’s hospital, where the stench is nauseous. Fear of crime has increased. Soldiers stand guard outside every supermarket. Parents are scared to let children go out, even to school. Some migrants have picked up infectious diseases.
