Ceuta files reveal Spain’s blind spot, Morocco’s pre-emptive response | Tarek El Bouzidi

The 40 documents released by the Spanish government on the events in occupied Ceuta expose a striking paradox. Much of the Spanish debate has centred on whether Morocco bore responsibility for the crisis. Yet the documents themselves point to a more complicated picture: one in which warnings about the consequences of a Spanish court ruling came before the mass crossing, Moroccan authorities had already taken measures on the ground, and Spanish intelligence and security agencies later produced markedly different accounts of what happened and why.

On September 9, the Spanish government declassified reports and communications from the police, Civil Guard, National Intelligence Centre (CNI) and Armed Forces Intelligence Centre (CIFAS). Read together, they reveal not a single, settled intelligence assessment of Morocco, but a collection of competing interpretations, some of them difficult to reconcile. In several cases, the documents move beyond established facts to suggest political motives for which they provide no conclusive evidence.

Crucially, the first of the relevant facts predates the Spanish “warning” sent to Rabat. Following Spanish Supreme Court ruling 814/2026, which changed the way people intercepted at sea while attempting to reach Ceuta by swimming were dealt with, a source at Morocco’s foreign ministry said Rabat had discussed the ruling’s implications with Madrid and warned Spanish officials in advance of the consequences it could have. Morocco had therefore raised the issue with Spain roughly a week before the events erupted on a massive scale. It was not waiting for Madrid to alert it to the danger; it had already identified the problem and warned the Spanish side of its potential consequences.

Morocco’s pre-emptive action was also evident on the ground. The National Human Rights Council documented tighter surveillance in Fnideq and increased deployments at sensitive points from the end of June, followed by the detention of would-be migrants and the foiling of successive collective attempts during the second half of July. The measures continued as July 30 approached, including efforts to prevent and intercept crossings and restrict movement towards the north at a number of locations and in several cities.

The Spanish figures themselves confirm the scale of this effort. The Civil Guard recorded 1,429 interception operations carried out by Moroccan forces during the week of July 20 to 26. Between 8 a.m. on July 29 and 8 a.m. on July 30, Moroccan forces intercepted 493 people out of 1,109 attempted swims. For this reason, one of the Civil Guard’s own reports concluded that it was not possible to speak of a “clear abandonment of duties” by the Moroccan authorities.

Against this sequence of events, the CNI’s notification to Moroccan intelligence takes on a different meaning from that suggested by some interpretations. Urgent memorandum C/10399 did not reach the General Directorate for Territorial Surveillance (DGST) and the General Directorate for Studies and Documentation (DGED) until 6:26 p.m. on July 29, only a few hours before the major wave. On the same day, the CNI had notified the Spanish government delegation in Ceuta at 1:52 p.m. of calls to cross via the fence and the sea, and then passed the information to the Civil Guard shortly afterwards.

Morocco, therefore, was not the party that needed a Spanish warning before taking action. By the time the memorandum reached its agencies on the evening of July 29, Morocco had already preceded Madrid in warning of the consequences of the court ruling and had spent weeks strengthening surveillance and intercepting attempts. Even the Spanish memorandum itself described the information as an “early warning” and ended by thanking the DGST and DGED for their “valuable and continued” cooperation.

The paradox becomes even clearer in the CIFAS report issued on the afternoon of July 30. The document acknowledges that the crossing attempts were directly linked to the effects of the Supreme Court ruling on the Spanish forces’ ability to intervene. It also records Moroccan forces intercepting around 500 attempts out of approximately 1,100 and considers it “highly likely” that the Moroccan authorities “were not actively encouraging the wave”.

The report then goes on to describe Morocco’s performance as “negligent and passive”, before invoking Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s visit to Algeria and assuming the possibility of Moroccan resentment, and then suggesting that Rabat might exploit the crisis to serve its strategic interests. The paradox is that the same document acknowledges that Sanchez’s visit did not appear to have provoked a negative reaction in Morocco.

This is where the distinction between intelligence information and political assessment becomes essential. The report does not provide instructions issued by the Moroccan authorities, nor does it contain information proving that a decision was taken to open the way or facilitate the crossings. Instead, it moves from measurable facts to a political interpretation based on possibility. That leap in the analysis helps explain the clear divergence between the Spanish documents themselves.

One Civil Guard report placed the hypothesis of “Moroccan complicity” towards the bottom of the possible scenarios, after operational surprise, the authorities being overwhelmed beyond their capacity to contain the situation, the redeployment of personnel to secure Throne Day celebrations, and efforts to avoid escalation on a national occasion. Another report considered it unlikely that the Moroccan state had allowed or encouraged the mass crossings.

These discrepancies do not merely reflect differences in detail. They suggest that part of the explanation for the crisis was constructed after the events had occurred. While the documented facts pointed to continued Moroccan interceptions, existing security cooperation and an earlier Moroccan warning, some reports were searching for a political explanation linked to Rabat without providing an intelligence basis to substantiate it.

The 40 documents thus return the centre of the debate to where it should have been from the outset. The danger was known inside Spain, the legal implications of the ruling had been the subject of warnings, the digital calls had been monitored, and information had been passed between more than one institution, while Morocco had already begun responding on the ground before the Spanish “early warning” reached it, only a few hours before the events.

What the documents reveal about Morocco, meanwhile, requires no defensive reading. The facts and figures contained in the Spanish reports themselves document the warning, the pre-emptive action, the interceptions and the cooperation. What remains for Madrid to explain is the gap between this body of evidence and the response that preceded the events of July 30, and how some reports then shifted from analysing what happened to searching for political hypotheses that implicated Morocco without information to substantiate them.