MADRID, September 10 — The Spanish government on Wednesday evening published forty declassified documents and pieces of correspondence on the Ceuta crisis, covering July 1 to July 31, laying out in unusual detail what Spanish intelligence knew, when it knew it, and who it told before more than 70,000 people crossed into the enclave on July 30 and 31. The documents come from the National Intelligence Centre (CNI), the Armed Forces Intelligence Centre, the National Police and the Civil Guard.
Under the hood, they trace a single thread: warnings that circulated online, were picked up by Spanish analysts, and were passed to Moroccan services and Spanish agencies the day before the mass crossing.
The July 29 warning
On July 29, Spanish intelligence detected widespread calls to storm the border fence and swim into Ceuta. The CNI relayed that information to Moroccan intelligence services, the city authorities and the Civil Guard. It did not anticipate a crossing on the scale that ultimately occurred.
Among the published papers is a memo titled “Irregular migration: early warning of possible attempts to enter Ceuta during Throne Day week.” It shows Spanish intelligence informed Morocco’s General Directorate for Territorial Surveillance and the General Directorate for Studies and Documentation that attempts to enter Ceuta by sea and across the fence were being planned to coincide with Throne Day celebrations. The memo identified one WhatsApp group and two Facebook groups — “Storming the Ceuta Fence,” “Ceuta-Fnideq” and “Harraga Ceuta” — with a combined membership of more than 160,000.
These groups were circulating calls to attempt to cross the border the following day. One post reproduced in the document read: “Anyone who wants to cross has one last chance during Throne Day; at eight o’clock the authorities will be busy with the celebrations.” Another said: “Fnideq and Ceuta are open all week, so whoever wants to should seize the opportunity.”
What the messages show
In a separate WhatsApp message, a Spanish intelligence officer informed the chief of staff of the government delegation in Ceuta on July 29 of a call to “storm the fence and enter by sea” the next day, taking advantage of Throne Day and the fact that Moroccan security forces would be occupied. The National Intelligence Centre also alerted the Civil Guard’s intelligence command and the National Centre for Immigration and Borders to the same calls.
An officer from the agency attempted to contact a Civil Guard official before sending him a message that read: “We have information about an attempt to enter by swimming and to storm the fence tomorrow, coinciding with Throne Day. We have several Facebook and WhatsApp groups encouraging these entries.” The Civil Guard official replied minutes later that he was away from his office before directing the officer to the person standing in for him.
The two later held a seven-minute phone call. That correspondence contradicts the position of the government delegation in Ceuta, which denied, following remarks by Defence Minister Margarita Robles before Congress, that it had “at any time received a report warning of what was going to happen on July 30.” The published documents confirm that its office did receive an intelligence alert regarding the calls being circulated.
The Spanish government said the available warnings pointed to possible attempts but did not anticipate the entry of more than 70,000 people over July 30 and 31. It added that the published documents had undergone anonymisation procedures and the removal of information that could affect state security or the operational capabilities of the agencies concerned.
What to watch next is whether Congress presses the government delegation in Ceuta on the gap between the alert it received and the denial it issued, and whether the anonymised material leaves enough of the operational chain visible to settle the question.
