Spanish National Police have been examining a bulk purchase of hydrochloric acid and aluminium foil in Ceuta after supermarket staff flagged a large group of migrants, reported as mostly Moroccan, buying the two products together.
Spanish outlets citing police sources identified activists from the NGO No Name Kitchen as accompanying those buyers.
Investigators have been trying to establish whether the materials were meant for homemade “acid bombs” — plastic bottles packed with acid and foil that produce a small blast, gas and corrosive spray — and whether anyone helped hide what was bought.
The devices match the bottles of corrosive liquid already thrown at Spanish soldiers and at local protesters in the days around the shop run.
The chemistry is crude and already in the open record. Police sources, describe aguafuerte — hydrochloric acid, also sold as salfumán — plus aluminium foil, sometimes with acetone, going into plastic bottles.
Thrown, the mix over-pressurises, pops and throws irritant gas and corrosive liquid. That is the device Spanish media say has been used against army patrols and against residents marching through Villajovita.
No Name Kitchen denies any role. Its coordinator, Ric Fernández, says the group packs 1,200 to 1,300 hot meals a day, buys foil for food and kitchen lining, and uses small amounts of solvent for cleaning, not “industrial quantities” for weapons.
Identified activists were not arrested because the products are legal to buy.
Interior officials, speaking to RTVE, have also denied that police or the Civil Guard are investigating “any NGO” for supplying explosive materials. That official line sits next to days of Spanish crime reporting in which officers are described identifying NNK members after the purchase.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s government has repeatedly insisted Ceuta is back under control. Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares has said “practically the entirety of those who entered Ceuta have already returned to Morocco.” Video from the enclave a month later shows tents, wrecked beaches and a city that looks like an earthquake has hit it.
No Name Kitchen, which campaigns against European border enforcement, was already in trouble before this. On 23 August two of its activists, a Canadian and a German, were detained at Benítez beach. Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said they had encouraged “violent groups” — illegal migrants — to respond aggressively to police and had resisted officers.
The NGO says the pair were filming. El Faro de Ceuta separately reported a French activist detained in the same neighbourhood after clashing with police. Viral clips accused volunteers of handing out pepper spray. Fernández told Newtral that was a “hoax to discredit us” and that the group has never bought pepper spray or “any device that could incite violence.”
Conservative Spanish media and accounts across X pointed to DevelopmentAid listings that name George Soros’ Open Society Foundations among No Name Kitchen’s funding agencies, and to the group’s old place inside Border Violence Monitoring Network, which has taken OSF money.
NNK says it does not take direct Open Society money for Ceuta and that any OSF link ran through an older network.
Meanwhile, native Spaniards continue to rise up in revolt against the government’s facilitation of mass migration.
On Wednesday, protests were recorded in more than 200 towns and citie. In Ceuta itself around 20,000 marched. They chanted “Ceuta is not for sale, Ceuta must be defended” and “expel the invaders.” Placards read “SOS. Europe, save us from our traitor government.” Outside Congress later that night the line was shorter still: “It’s not immigration, it’s invasion.”
Maria Sánchez, a 47-year-old housewife, told AFP in Ceuta: “We are Spanish, we don’t want any government to abandon us again like they’ve abandoned us.”
David Hernández, a 45-year-old teacher, told Reuters: “The response has been inadequate, late and, to top it all, has involved a complete dereliction of duty on the part of the government. We cannot be second-class citizens, and our border must not be sidelined.”
Another resident, who gave only the name Lola, said the situation was “spiralling out of control” and that “there’s a point where this will become a powder keg.”
In Madrid, an eatimated150,000 matched through the streets chanting “Sánchez to prison” and “Invaders — go home.”
PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo stood in that crowd and said: “A Spanish city has been invaded, occupied and, unfortunately, this happened with the knowledge of the Government of Spain.” He and Vox leader Santiago Abascal both accused Sánchez of lying to Spaniards and of being a “traitor to Spain” and a “lackey of Morocco.”
Madrid mayor José Luis Martínez-Almeida said: “Ceuta is Spanish and will not be abandoned.” Regional president Isabel Díaz Ayuso said the government had “done nothing but lie since they arrived” and that “they have abandoned us, not only the people of Ceuta, but the whole of Spain before the eyes of the world.”
As a section of the protesters continued to march toward Congress, police reportedly fired rubber bullets and tear gas.
The state that could not keep 70,000 people from pouring into a Spanish city unimpeded found the resources to gas citizens who object.
Thursday, Sánchez went to Congress to insist the executive “has nothing to hide.” Claiming that it is “absurd to think that the government knew and did nothing.” He claimed more than 90 percent of arrivals were returned within 72 hours — “one of the fastest return processes in European history” — and blamed social-media rumours plus a misread Supreme Court ruling that stopped immediate sea pushbacks.
He again said he had no indication Morocco organised the surge. Ceuta and Melilla, he added, will remain Spanish “until the end of time.”
The Council of Ministers has now waved through a €309 million emergency package — housing, services, extra police — about 16 percent of Ceuta’s output for the rest of the year.
Critics charge that tent camps for 1,500 adults do not house 5,000 to 10,000 people who have already learned that staying in place works. Asylum claims, minor-protection rules and “ordinary return procedure” are how a surge becomes a settlement.
A government that treats border defence as a branding exercise, then gasses the public for noticing and objecting, is asking for more unrest and more chaos.
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