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A serious incident, a hostile Morocco: that is what readers of El País are being led to believe, although neither claim has been established. The newspaper’s October 12 report relies on anonymous sources and treats descriptions such as “deliberate” and “repeated” as established facts. An opinion piece by political analyst Samir Bennis.

At a time when the Moroccan-Spanish partnership has never shown such resilience, the announcement that King Felipe VI will visit Ceuta and Melilla on October 13 and 14 strikes a jarring note—and looks like a thinly disguised capitulation to the escalating demands of Spain’s right and radical right. The trip, the Spanish monarch’s first since ascending the throne, drags relations between the two countries back into a colonial anachronism and runs counter to every logic of de-escalation.

In the space of just a few weeks, security expert José María Gil Garre has performed a spectacular about-face. After pointing, with digital evidence to back his case, to Algeria’s hidden hand behind the migrant assault on Ceuta, the same specialist has now produced a report directly attributing the management of the crisis to a faction within the “Makhzen.” It is a bewildering U-turn, to say the least, and one that highlights just how volatile some reports—and their authors—can be.

Championed by Spain’s PP and Vox, the European Parliament resolution adopted on September 17 frustrated the ambitions of its two sponsors, who had hoped to turn the Strasbourg chamber into an inquisition tribunal against Morocco. Here is why the European maneuver by PP and Vox turned into a political debacle for its architects.

A factual audit from July 30 to September 17, 2026. Research concluded on September 18, 2026.

By trying to make the treaties of 1767 and 1799 say what they do not, Spanish philosopher Emmanuel Martínez Alcocer has sought to write a history—particularly that of Ceuta and Melilla—with Morocco written out of it, claiming that the Moroccan state did not exist before 1956. It is an ideological contrivance whose glaring flaws Lahcen Haddad, a parliamentarian, academic and former minister, exposes through a relentless demonstration combining international law and historical exegesis.

The highly anticipated documents on Ceuta had barely been released before they were already fueling two opposing narratives: one implicating Morocco, the other targeting Pedro Sánchez’s handling of the crisis. The Spanish government quickly stepped in to set the record straight. The CNI had indeed detected calls circulating on social media, but it never warned of a mass arrival or estimated that 180,000 people might take part.

The migrant rush on the Ceuta enclave was opportunistically exploited by Algeria to stab its Moroccan “brothers” in the back. How quickly the past is forgotten!

Any decision based on considerations similar to those that the Spanish prime minister himself described as “humane, courageous and intelligent” is interpreted in Madrid as an expression of malicious intent on Morocco’s part to harm Spain’s interests, blackmail it or revive its claims over Ceuta and Melilla.