Spain's Interior Minister Demands Answers Over Morocco-Linked Ceuta Crossing Report

Spain's Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska sent a letter in the early hours of Wednesday to National Police Director General Francisco Pardo Piqueras, demanding he clarify whether the police force holds intelligence indicating that Moroccan agents orchestrated the entry of approximately 70,000 people into the autonomous city of Ceuta at the end of July — and, if so, since when that information was in the force's possession.

The letter, to which El País gained access, was prompted by a report compiled by the immigration unit of the Foreign Nationals Commissariat — known by its acronym CENIF — and submitted on Monday to the Audiencia Nacional. According to the document, the mass crossing on 30 and 31 July may have been deliberately planned to overwhelm and collapse the border crossing point rather than representing a spontaneous migratory movement.

The contents of the report, first disclosed by El Español, allege that Moroccan gendarmes acting under the direction of plainclothes agents guided the migrants with the explicit aim of disabling the border system. Police sources confirmed to El País that the document examined in detail all footage and video material captured on the ground.

A minister who says he was not told

Marlaska stated explicitly in the letter that he had been unaware of this information, describing it as "absolutely essential." He wrote that he needed to know when the National Police first held it so that he, as minister, could "exercise my responsibility" and the government could "adopt the appropriate decisions in relation to the migration crisis in Ceuta." The minister invoked the National Security Law 36/2015, arguing that once a situation of national security interest has been declared, such intelligence must be placed immediately at the disposal of the National Security Council and other competent bodies — a process he characterised as entirely separate from and not dependent upon any ongoing judicial proceedings.

The disclosure creates a direct tension with the public position of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who said in an interview on Cadena SER on Monday that no evidence existed to suggest Morocco had organised the migrants. Sánchez described the neighbouring country's response as offering "instantaneous, immediate cooperation" and said the two governments were collaborating closely on returns. He suggested that criminal networks could lie behind the events, a line that Marlaska had also previously taken, having maintained that there was never sufficient information to anticipate a crossing of such scale.

A judge weighs whether to open a formal investigation

The report now sits with investigating judge María Tardón at the Audiencia Nacional, who forwarded it on Tuesday to the public prosecutor to determine whether the matter falls within that court's jurisdiction. Tardón had taken an initial procedural step on 3 August towards opening an investigation after the party Iustitia Europa lodged a complaint over the mass entry into the autonomous city. Before formally opening a case, she had requested reports from both the National Police and the Guardia Civil to establish whether what occurred amounted to "a concerted or directed action" by a criminal group or another actor, and whether the government had held any prior intelligence.

Once the prosecutor responds, the judge is expected to issue a ruling on whether sufficient material exists to open a formal investigation and whether the case should remain at the Audiencia Nacional — given its implications for state security — or be transferred to an ordinary court in Ceuta. In its original complaint, Iustitia Europa argued that the movement of people from Morocco to Ceuta could not be characterised as "an ordinary or spontaneous migratory phenomenon" given its scale and simultaneity, and described it as an "instrumentalisation of migratory flows" that had overwhelmed the security forces and compromised the territorial integrity of an external frontier of the European Union.