Spain's Spy Agency Issued Multiple Warnings Before Ceuta Migrant Surge
Declassified files show Spain's intelligence agency warned of a planned mass crossing before the Ceuta crisis, but the government insists the scale was not anticipated.
Spain's national intelligence agency sent several alerts in the days before a massive migrant influx overwhelmed the Spanish exclave of Ceuta in late July, according to documents declassified by the government on Wednesday.
The files — including letters, WhatsApp transcripts, internal charts, and reports from law enforcement and intelligence bodies — have intensified criticism of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez's handling of the crisis, with opponents accusing him of downplaying prior warnings and of being too lenient toward Morocco.
One WhatsApp message, sent on July 29 to the Spanish government's delegation in Ceuta, flagged "a call on social media for an assault on the fence and by sea tomorrow at 8 p.m." The message noted that two groups with a combined following of 180,000 were promoting the effort, underscoring the potential reach.
Similar warnings were issued the same day to Spain's Civil Guard police, referencing "several groups on Facebook and WhatsApp encouraging these attempts."
The following day, more than 72,000 people began crossing into Ceuta from Morocco, overwhelming local authorities. The influx sparked major protests in Spain, with critics blaming Sánchez's government for failing to prepare.
Sánchez has defended his administration's response and has avoided directly criticizing Morocco, a stance that has drawn further backlash from opponents who say he is pandering to Rabat.
On Wednesday, a spokesperson for Sánchez's office pushed back against the notion that the documents proved prior warning of a mass crossing of that scale. "The published documents show that the information available prior to the massive influx did not make it possible to anticipate the magnitude the crisis ultimately reached, nor to gauge the necessary response sufficiently in advance," the spokesperson said.
In the days just before the surge, hundreds of migrants had already reached Ceuta by swimming or crossing the border, a situation acknowledged by Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska. He described it as "an extraordinary, exceptional situation" and said authorities were handling it with resources already deployed permanently in the region.