Spain’s intelligence service repeatedly warned that a mass migrant crossing from Morocco into Ceuta was imminent in the weeks before last week’s deadly border crisis, it has been claimed.
Spanish radio station Cadena SER, citing sources linked to Spain’s security services, said the National Intelligence Centre (CNI) issued several warnings before more than 50,000 people crossed into the North African enclave on July 30.
The crisis has now claimed at least 94 lives, making it one of the deadliest migration disasters in Spain’s recent history.
According to the report, intelligence officials became increasingly concerned after a Spanish Supreme Court ruling on July 8, which found that migrants entering Ceuta or Melilla by swimming could not be subject to speedy returns across the border.
Security sources claimed the ruling created an ‘administrative blind spot’ that was quickly exploited by human trafficking networks, which allegedly used it to encourage and organise a mass crossing.
Although the CNI is said not to have warned of the exact date of the crossing, the sources told Cadena SER that it repeatedly alerted the Interior Ministry that the threat of a large-scale incursion was real.
The same sources claimed the ministry failed to act because security resources along the Ceuta border were ‘insufficient’.
‘These people would not have entered Spain if Interior had taken measures to prevent it,’ one source said, accusing the ministry of trying to shift responsibility onto the intelligence services after the crisis unfolded.
The report comes after Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska insisted the CNI had provided ‘no warning whatsoever’ that such an event was about to occur.
The Interior Ministry continues to maintain that it received no intelligence reports predicting a mass crossing like the one that took place on July 30.
However, officials acknowledged they had detected a sharp increase in migrants attempting to swim into Ceuta from mid-July and had reinforced border security as crossings increased.
According to Cadena SER, the ministry also warned Spain’s Migration Ministry eight days before the crisis that pressure on Ceuta’s Temporary Immigrant Stay Centre (CETI) could soon become ‘critical’.
Following the unprecedented influx, the government has now begun transferring 340 beds from the Las Raices Temporary Reception Centre in Tenerife to Ceuta to help accommodate migrants remaining in the city.
