Published | July 30, 2026

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Hundreds of migrants are swimming from Morocco to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, overwhelming border security, local authorities said on Wednesday.

While good weather typically brings a surge in migrant crossings by sea during the summer, Ceuta authorities noted that the current number of swimmers is unusual.

“In the last few days, more than 1,500 migrants, including adults and minors, have reached Ceuta by sea,” the leader of Ceuta’s government, Juan Jesús Vivas, told journalists. “The reception centres are collapsed and saturated.”

Vivas also revealed that migrants had previously died in the attempt, with 60 bodies being spotted at sea over the past year.

Spain’s Civil Guard, Maritime Rescue Service, and the Red Cross have been deploying boats to rescue migrants from the water before bringing them to Ceuta. Hundreds are now sleeping outside a migrant reception centre that has exceeded its capacity.

Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska, in an interview with Spanish television channel laSexta, acknowledged that authorities were facing “an extraordinary, exceptional situation.” He asserted that “we are dealing with it with the means that we already have deployed there permanently.”

On Wednesday, Grande-Marlaska praised Moroccan authorities, saying they were cooperating and that the relationship with the kingdom was “close and based on loyalty.” “They are also limiting irregular departures,” he told laSexta.

Those attempting the crossing are mainly Moroccans, along with a small number of Algerians who had been living in Morocco while trying to migrate to Europe, according to activists in Morocco and Ceuta.

It was not clear what prompted so many migrants to swim to Ceuta. Vivas criticised a Spanish Supreme Court ruling earlier this month that found migrants arriving by sea cannot be immediately returned to Morocco without due process, unlike those who cross into Spain by land, such as by scaling the border fence.

However, some activists, including Omar Naji, president of the Moroccan Association of Human Rights in Eastern Morocco, questioned whether the ruling had triggered the surge. Most Moroccans would have been unaware of the legal decision, he said. Instead, Naji suggested the timing of the crossings—which came after Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez met Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune last week—reminded him of the May 2021 border crisis, when more than 8,000 migrants poured into Ceuta in just two days.

It has not been confirmed exactly how many migrants have reached the territory by swimming.