In the complete absence of any meaningful government action, the people of Ceuta have taken matters into their own hands.
On Wednesday night, Spanish flags filled the streets of the North African enclave. Crowds chanted for deportations. Then a column of residents pushed toward El Trampolín beach, the open-air settlement that has occupied a family shoreline for nearly a month. Tents came down. Belongings went into the sea.
Police formed a line between Spaniards and the camps — and opened fire with rubber bullets on the locals.
That is the picture now coming out of a city of roughly 84,000 people that was flooded at the end of July by a crossing Spanish officials have put above 70,000 and, in some tallies, near 80,000.
The government spent weeks talking about “coexistence,” “diversity,” and “normality.” Ceuta spent those same weeks living with feces in children’s parks, hospital wards under strain, and a rising stack of sexual-assault files. On Wednesday, the patience snapped.
The protest began in the late afternoon in O’Donnell, outside the old Military Hospital — one of the sites residents feared the central government wanted to turn into migrant housing.
El Mundo put more than 2,000 people at the Government Delegation. Other Spanish outlets described a larger march through the centre, Spanish and Ceuta flags everywhere, slogans hammered out for hours: “Ceuta no se vende, Ceuta se defiende.” “Un caballa nunca se rinde.” “Invasores expulsión.” “Ceuta no es un CETI.”
They demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and of the government delegate in the city, Miguel Ángel Pérez Triano.
When night fell, a few hundred broke toward El Trampolín. El Español reported residents ripping down tents, throwing camp gear into the water, and trying to drive the remaining occupants off “our beach.”
Police blocked the main part of the beach. Deterrent rounds followed. Yes, really. They fired rubber bullets at Spaniards protesting illegal settlement; but there was no such volley when tens of thousands illegally stormed the border in July.
Spanish journalist Vito Quiles remarked on Ceutíes bursting the illegal beach settlements while the Spanish state stood still. “Honor al pueblo de Ceuta,” he wrote — honour to a city doing the job the ministries would not.
Further footage captured groups of local men moving through the dark after the official march had broken up, describing armed residents hunting those they call invaders. After four weeks of official paralysis in the city, locals took matters into their own hands.
One chant captured on the sand, reported by El Mundo, summarised the feeling among residents; “Si no se quieren ir, los echaremos nosotros.” If they will not leave, we will throw them out.
They also chanted “Aquí hay más policía que el día del salto,” there are more police than on the day of the mass jump.
Officers who had been unable or unwilling to keep the shoreline clear of shacks suddenly had the numbers to stop Spaniards from finishing the clearance themselves.
A left-wing government that spent a month insisting the situation was under control found the will to fire on its own citizens the moment those citizens tried to recover a public beach.
By Thursday morning the temperature had risen again. AFP reported that a military vehicle with four soldiers was ambushed in the early hours by a crowd of around 70 migrants throwing stones and other objects.
The soldiers fled and called for police. Twelve Moroccan men were detained. One soldier was slightly injured. Kissy Chandiramani, Ceuta’s finance councillor, stated: “The tension in the city of Ceuta is very high” because there is “no response” from the government and “we feel abandoned.”
Remaining migrant shanty camps on the beach were set alight and destroyed.
City hall, aid groups counting food rations, and anyone with eyes on Trampolín, Benítez, the hills and the warehouse district nite that thousands of migrants remain.
We’ve seen Mother weeping on live television. One said her 16-year-old “has to go everywhere with her father or with me because the migrants devour her. I can’t take it anymore. I want them all gone,” Adding that “What’s stayed here is the worst of it; there are murderers, rapists, thieves.”
Sisters Yoli and María José pulled their daughters out of the city. “We feel humiliated, trampled,” Yoli told Cuatro. “I have had to take my daughters out of their house because the Government does nothing, because Mr. Pedro Sánchez is on vacation in La Mareta. Nobody cares about us.”
Beaches that used to hold families became camps of reed huts, plastic, rotting food, urine and human waste. Children’s parks were left smeared in shit.
Hospitals opened emergency capacity. Doctors speak of scabies, tuberculosis, impetigo and a “health catastrophe.”
A BBVA branch closed after a security guard was beaten trying to stop a robbery of an elderly woman. Women described needing escorts to their own front doors.
This was the “example of coexistence” Inclusion Minister Elma Saiz chose to praise from a distance. “Ceuta is a true example of coexistence,” she said. “A city in which different cultures, traditions, and faiths coexist. And which has demonstrated over decades that it is one of its greatest strengths.” Diversity, she added, is “our greatest strength.” The parks full of excrement did not make the speech.
Police unions have described girls and women glued to police vans near the CETI because the moment they step away they are raped. There are accounts of daily assaults, of victims too frightened to report, of attacks moving into the hills where patrols cannot easily follow.
Reports also describe “many dead cats, cut,” some missing half a body or pierced, plus half-eaten pigeons and seagulls in the areas where migrants are camping.
Theo latest footage confirms that so called progressive NGO workers are still operating in the city, even handing pepper spray to illegal migrants during Wednesday’s clashes — kit for use against the local Spaniards coming down to the beach.
Another clip shows Gaza Barbie, a leftist agitator, joining migrant groups to chant “Free Palestine”.
This woman has spent the entirety of August filming herself fleetingly appearing near migrant groups, insisting the streets are safe and dismissing frightened neighbours as xenophobes.
Meanwhile, Spanish television new captured a Moroccan invader explaining that Spanish girls being raped should surprise no one, because they walk alone, and that the fault lies with parents who do not keep them at home.
On Thursday, residents blocked a Red Cross food convoy headed for the beach camps, forcing them to eventually leave.
Locals want the illegal camps gone. They want deportations of those with no asylum claim. They want their daughters able to walk without a male escort. They want parks that are not toilets.
They want a government that treats a Spanish city as Spanish territory rather than a holding pen for rapists, murderers and other criminals.
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