In the early hours of the crisis, the episode was largely framed as a predictable consequence of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s left-liberal approach to migration. At both the national and European levels, even across the Atlantic, the crisis prompted intense criticism of Sánchez’s migration policies, particularly pointing to a 2026 law aimed at regularizing half a million migrants, as well as a recent Spanish Supreme Court ruling preventing the immediate deportation of those arriving by sea, as pull factors that had incentivized people to flood into the city.
In reality, though, the issue is far more complex. The crossings have brought relations between Spain and Morocco back into the spotlight. Having travelled to Ceuta on July 31, Sánchez called the crossings “a violation and attack on Spain’s territorial integrity.” Yet, the prime minister notably refrained from identifying who had perpetrated such actions. Instead, he initially placed the blame on human trafficking networks and, when testifying before Congress a month into the massive arrivals, on disinformation campaigns allegedly disseminated by the international far-right, Russia and Israel. Both Moscow and Tel Aviv have denied such allegations. Sánchez and many of his ministers have praised Morocco for its “immediate, exemplary cooperation” in coordinating the migrants’ return, while denying any lack of trust in Rabat. At the same time, strikingly, Spain’s Defence Minister has abstained from mentioning Rabat altogether.
Far from an isolated episode of migratory mismanagement, the event represented Morocco’s latest weaponization of civilians as part of a broader grey-zone strategy through which Rabat seeks to advance its territorial claims of the enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla without crossing the red line of open confrontation. Cooperation with Rabat to contain irregular migration at the European Union (EU)’s southern border remains essential not only for Madrid but for the rest of its European partners, and ultimately depends on Morocco’s willingness to do its due diligence. But this interdependence does little to justify Madrid’s restraint in calling out its southern neighbor more directly, given Rabat’s track record of using migration as well as other tactics to influence Spain’s foreign policy.
At this point, the Spanish government’s conspicuous silence regarding its southern neighbor has not gone unnoticed, leaving one wondering about the reasons behind Madrid’s reluctance to respond diplomatically to Morocco’s use of hybrid tactics in the grey zone.
The Grey Zone: a Long-run Game of Strategic Patience
The grey zone is a strategic category designated to the space between peace based on mutual trust and openly declared warfare. Its defining feature is the pursuit of maximalist goals, such as territorial claims, through non-military means (political, economic, social, or disinformation), enabling states to deliberately refrain from crossing the threshold that would shift a coercive situation into open confrontation and trigger an escalatory response. The ambiguity inherent in gray-zone activities is intended to make attribution more difficult, enabling the responsible party to remain in the shadows, deny responsibility, and claim ignorance.
Despite their small size, Ceuta and Melilla hold tactical and operational value. The Strait of Gibraltar, with Ceuta as one of its two coastal approaches, is a main chokepoint in the global energy supply system, through which 20% of oil and gas destined for Europe is shipped.
That said, both cities are among the enduring points of friction in Spanish-Moroccan relations. For decades, Morocco has openly claimed sovereignty over these enclaves, as well as their surrounding waters and pieces of land, making Rabat the only state actively contesting Spain’s territorial integrity. In Morocco’s official narrative, both cities are “occupied territories” whose incorporation into the Alaouite Kingdom is framed as an unfinished decolonization process that runs in parallel to its claims over Western Sahara.
In 2020, then-Moroccan Prime Minister Saadeddine El Othmani stated both Ceuta and Melilla were Moroccan, just as Western Sahara was. In what constituted Morocco’s first official statement following the August 2026 crisis, Morocco’s Minister of Justice Abdellatif Ouahbi reaffirmed in an interview with the Saudi state television channel that Morocco continues to aspire to eventually integrate them into the Kingdom.
Their condition as the EU’s external borders, their proximity to irregular migration routes and transnational criminal networks, as well as Morocco’s sovereignty claims over them make them particularly sensitive from Spain’s national security standpoint. Back in 2011, for instance, Spanish police identified Moroccan passports issued to people born in Ceuta or Melilla that listed Morocco as the sovereign owner of both cities. The Spanish government ultimately declared them invalid.
The Old Playbook
One of Morocco’s most effective pressure tools has been the weaponization of migratory flows through manipulating its border controls. Since the 1990s, the country has alternated between periods of cooperation with Spain and periods of loose border controls, ultimately turning the management of irregular migration into a political tool to pressure Spain when its foreign policies run counter to Morocco’s interests.
It did so in 2021, when Moroccan authorities allowed 8,000 people to cross into Ceuta, in what appeared to be retaliation for Spain letting Brahim Ghali, leader of the Polisario Front, the movement advocating independence for Western Sahara, receive medical treatment for COVID-19 at a Spanish hospital. The episode triggered a ten-month diplomatic spat: in 2022, mounting pressure culminated in Sánchez’s unilateral decision to abruptly change Spain’s forty-seven-year-long stance on carefully staying neutral regarding Western Sahara. In a letter addressed to Moroccan King Mohamed VI, Sánchez publicly endorsed Rabat’s proposal to keep Western Sahara an autonomous region under its sovereignty, which strained relations with Algeria. At a subsequent official dinner on Moroccan soil, officials accidentally displayed the Spanish flag upside down.
This time around, Sánchez’s first visit to Algeria in four years might have been an incentive for Rabat. As unclassified reports by Spain’s security services found operational coordination and plans to enter Ceuta had been underway across diverse social media platforms, including on WhatsApp groups with 180,000 members, with the activity intensifying in the lead-up to the crossings. As one report noted, the call to action “did not occur spontaneously or without structure”; rather, there was “a pattern aimed at maximizing the impact and dissemination of the posts.” Also, on the massive arrival, the Moroccan police response “was one of total permissiveness to say the least.”
The Cost of Appeasement
The grey zone is ultimately a game played in the long run, in which a state seeks to exploit an adversary’s political, social, and economic vulnerabilities over time, gradually eroding its capacity to respond to the point when political fatigue will hand them the desirable strategic concessions. Morocco’s continued territorial claims constitute a persistent risk to Spain’s territorial integrity, especially when such a challenge is not shared with the rest of European or NATO allies.
The August episode played squarely into Morocco’s hands, exploiting Spain’s already unstable domestic political landscape to deepen existing fractures between its centre-left coalition government and opposition parties while further polarizing an increasingly divided public over migration. The episode falls into a narrative that portrays Ceuta and Melilla as conflict-prone cities, politically problematic, and economically dependent on the Spanish mainland to deal with mass migration. Such discourse seeks to erode cohesion between the cities and the rest of the Spanish territory.
The government’s reluctance to hold Morocco accountable for its role in the Ceuta crisis is arguably justifiable in the short term, given Spain’s dependence on its neighbor’s cooperation and willingness to receive those who entered Ceuta and have yet to leave. Spanish and European law constrain Spain’s ability to return the migrants: this legislative barrier makes Morocco’s collaboration, a third party outside EU borders, an essential element in the equation.
However, praising Morocco’s cooperation is something far different. Of course, should the prime minister call Rabat out, his government would be placed in a delicate position that would threaten escalation. But that is the trap of grey zone tactics: the state stays below the threshold that would trigger a big response, and should a response come, it has plausible deniability, claims that the target is the aggressor, and turns the political burden of escalation back onto its adversary.
If anything, the crisis proved that diplomatic tensions with Morocco were, and remain, far from over. Sánchez’s unilateral shift in Spain’s longstanding neutral stance on Western Sahara was in vain, as it did not deliver the strategic accommodation that Madrid had hoped for. Appeasement with Morocco may buy short-term stability, but it does not eliminate the underlying dispute, nor remove the risk of future crises.
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