Fifty thousand migrants crossed the border between Morocco and the Spanish North African territory of Ceuta last week, mostly by swimming along the coast. Seventy two died in the attempt. By now, almost all have been sent back to Morocco. None have made it to mainland Spain or other parts of the EU.
The migrant influx was a trial for Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who called it a "violation of Spain's territorial integrity” caused by trafficking gangs that deliberately misconstrued a Spanish Supreme Court ruling, claiming that migrants who arrived by sea could not be sent back without a hearing.
Others have blamed social media disinformation from Morocco or even (with little evidence) Israel and the US, supposedly exacting revenge for Spain’s vocal opposition to the war in Iran. In short, we don’t know the full cause of the influx, but it seems likely that some combination of organized criminals and possibly state actors exploited desperate people with the intention of destabilizing an EU government.
The Ukrainian government claims that there has been an intensive Russian propaganda campaign using images from Ceuta to sow discord in the union.
There’s one important thing we do know: there are immigration controls between Ceuta and the Spanish mainland. We also know that at the time of writing almost every migrant who crossed the border has now been repatriated to Morocco.
So why did the government in Sweden paint a picture of a crisis that risked causing an influx of migrants all the way up here? A picture that helps those who seek to destabilize Europe?
Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson and Johan Forssell insisted in a text in Svenska Dagbladet that “Sweden won’t accept migrants who first come to Spain and then travel onwards through Europe”, as though such migrants somehow might be about to arrive. They raised the prospect of re-introducing border controls to stem the (non-existent) tide.
Kristersson and Forssell blamed Spain’s recent amnesty for irregular immigrants for exerting a pull on immigrants to Ceuta, a claim that may have some merit (over a million people have applied, twice the expected number, largely Spanish-speaking South Americans). But this remains a problem for Ceuta and for Spain, with few implications for the rest of us.
They claimed a future left-wing government could try something similar in Sweden, if the Left Party and the Greens got their way. This claim seems more far-fetched: the Social Democrats are likely to dominate any future government, and their most recent period in office was characterized by ever-stricter immigration rules. Still, the Moderates, trailing in the polls, believe that painting their opponents as soft on immigration could help them close the gap ahead of next month’s election.
This is understandable, but at what cost? Sweden was not alone in speaking out against Spain at the height of the crisis — indeed many other countries did the same, either because they’d misconstrued the nature of the crisis or for domestic political reasons.
But abandoning the Spanish government when it may be under some kind of orchestrated external attack — just to score some domestic political points on immigration — risks undermining European solidarity when it’s needed most. You can be sure that the Russians, Iranians and Donald Trump’s US administration are watching closely.
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