MADRID, September 10 — Spain’s National Intelligence Service warned Moroccan and Ceuta authorities a day before the mass crossing that social media groups were urging migrants to reach the Spanish exclave, according to government documents declassified this week. The CNI told Moroccan intelligence it had identified WhatsApp and Facebook groups promoting an attempt to enter Ceuta on 30 July, “both swimming and via the [border] fence,” the documents show. The service reported that around 180,000 people were receiving the messages.
One of them read: “Whoever wants to cross has the last chance on Throne Day [30 July] at 8 the authorities will be distracted with the celebrations and parades.” The warning did not stop at Rabat. The CNI also sent a text message to the central government’s representation in Ceuta and to the civil guard flagging the social media activity, according to the same filing.
A warning, and what followed
At least 72,000 migrants crossed from Morocco into Ceuta on 30 and 31 July. Most swam around a border fence, and at least 100 people died during the crossing, according to figures from Ceuta’s mayor. Although most returned, as many as 5,000 remain in makeshift camps or are sleeping on the city’s streets and beaches, feeding unrest in the autonomous Spanish city on North Africa’s coast.
Locals have raised safety concerns; some have destroyed shelters and blocked aid bound for the migrants. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has insisted the events of 30 July were impossible to predict.
Opposition parties say the documents show otherwise. Sánchez had previously told parliament there was “no information that conveyed the magnitude” of the “crisis we were going to suffer” on the last two days of July. The messages form part of a tranche of more than 40 security documents linked to the Ceuta crossing that the government declassified after mounting pressure on Sánchez over his handling of the crisis, and after widespread allegations in Spain that Morocco played a role in facilitating the crossings.
Earlier this month, a leaked Spanish police report appeared to implicate Moroccan police in the incident. Sánchez has maintained there is no evidence suggesting Moroccan complicity.
The government’s position
Shortly before the documents were released on Wednesday, Sánchez told Spanish television that “the mass arrival of migrants was not expected.” Opposition politicians said the newly released material contradicts that claim. “They had the information, they are directly responsible for the invasion of Ceuta and for those who died,” said Ester Muñoz of the conservative People’s Party.
Jorge Buxadé of the far-right Vox said on social media that the documents showed Sánchez “and his band of criminals should be brought before the Supreme Court for treason and security crimes.” The government has continued to insist it acted according to the information available.
Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares said he was “not aware of any report that might have foreseen the magnitude of what happened on July 30.” A government source said the published documents “showed that the information available before the mass crossing did not make it possible to anticipate the scale that the crisis would reach or prepare with enough time the necessary response.” Miguel Ángel Pérez Triano, the central government’s delegate in Ceuta, addressed the revelations about the text messages the CNI had sent to his office the day before the mass crossing.
“The Whatsapps from [July] 29 do not constitute an alert or a report,” he said. “It is nothing more than an exchange of information.” What happens next turns on the documents themselves.
The declassified tranche runs to more than 40 files, and the political fight now centers on whether the warnings of 29 July constituted actionable intelligence or, as the government’s delegate in Ceuta describes it, an exchange of information. The record shows the warnings went out. The argument is over what they meant.
