More than 50,000 migrants crossed into Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta last week, reigniting a territorial dispute with Morocco that dates back centuries and putting fresh pressure on Madrid’s control over the last European-held territories on the African mainland.
Most of those who entered Ceuta have since returned to Morocco, but several thousand remain in the enclave this week, and the surge has renewed long-standing questions about why Spain still holds these territories, why Morocco has never managed to reclaim them, and what residents living inside the enclaves actually want for their future.
Two enclaves, a handful of islands, and the last trace of an empire
Ceuta and Melilla sit on Morocco’s northern coast, along with a scattering of nearby islands known collectively as the Plazas de Soberanía. That group includes the Chafarinas Islands, the Alhucemas Islands, and the Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera. Together, these territories represent the only pieces of the old Spanish colonial empire still under Spanish control.
Ceuta’s history under European rule stretches back to 1415, when it came under Portuguese control before passing to Spain in 1580. Melilla’s Spanish era began even earlier, in 1497, after a Spanish nobleman conquered the city. When Portugal broke away from Spanish rule in 1640 following years of war, Ceuta stayed with Spain rather than reverting to Portuguese control.
Yolanda Aixelà Cabré, an anthropologist at IMF-CSIC in Barcelona, said Spain’s foothold in North Africa grew out of losses elsewhere. “Spain reached its greatest extent in Latin America, and with the loss of Cuba, Costa Rica and the Philippines in 1898, it shifted its influence to Africa, although most European colonial powers had already divided it among themselves,” Cabré said.
By the time African decolonization swept through the continent in the twentieth century, Ceuta and Melilla were left standing as the only European-controlled territories remaining on the African mainland. Both are legally part of Spain today and sit inside the European Union’s external border, despite their location across the Mediterranean from mainland Spain.
Cabré argued that Spain’s attachment to the territories runs deeper than strategy or economics. “For Spain, maintaining these enclaves is fundamental on a symbolic level because they reinforce Spanish grandeur, its imperial past which the State continues to consider a bearer of civilisation in contrast to barbarism, a notion perfectly encapsulated by the repetitive discourse that Columbus, representing the Catholic Monarchs, ‘discovered’ America,” she said.
Why Morocco never got the territories back
Morocco gained independence from France in 1956, and Spain recognized that independence while holding onto Ceuta and Melilla. Ever since, Morocco has argued that both cities, which it calls “Sebtah and Melilah,” along with the Plazas de Soberanía, belong within its borders.
Selim Balouati Lakhloufi, a historian who studies North African history and the Rif region of northern Morocco, said the enclaves have persisted as separate territories because they existed long before the modern Moroccan state took shape. “They are enclaves that have been occupied for centuries,” he told Al Jazeera, adding that their age predates the country trying to reclaim them.
Lakhloufi said the dispute has become a reliable talking point in Moroccan domestic politics. “This has always been used by the Moroccan political class as a point of criticism against Spain,” he said.
Samir Bennis, a Washington-based political adviser and co-founder of Morocco World News who studies Moroccan foreign policy, said Morocco had chances early in its independence to press the issue internationally but chose not to. “Perhaps this issue would not have had the same detrimental effect on bilateral relations had Moroccan leaders shown greater determination in the early 1960s, during the height of the decolonisation period, to bring the matter before the United Nations and seek recognition of these two cities as colonial territories that should be liberated from any foreign presence,” Bennis said.
Bennis pointed to two reasons Morocco held back. The scale of its territorial disputes with Spain was the first obstacle. “The first was the sheer scale of the territorial disputes between Spain and Morocco. Given the difficulty Morocco faced in simultaneously contesting Spanish control over several territories, the Moroccan government decided to proceed gradually in its efforts to recover the parts of Moroccan territory that remained under Spanish rule,” he said.
The second factor, Bennis said, was Spain’s own approach to resolving disputes gradually rather than all at once. “The second factor that led the Moroccan leadership to postpone addressing the question of Ceuta and Melilla was the willingness shown by the Spanish authorities to resolve their territorial disputes with Morocco progressively. In the end, this strategy proved highly beneficial for safeguarding Spain’s interests in the two cities,” he said.
A political claim, not a legal one
Legal experts describe Morocco’s case for the territories as weak. Bennis said Morocco still has some ground to stand on despite that weakness, noting the country can point to historical, geographical and human arguments that complicate Spain’s position, even if those arguments do not amount to a strong legal claim.
Jamie Trinidad, a fellow and director of studies in law at Wolfson College, Cambridge University, agreed that Morocco’s legal footing is thin. “It is a political, rather than a legal, claim, similar to Spain’s claim to Gibraltar, which lies across the strait from Ceuta,” Trinidad said. Gibraltar, controlled by Britain, sits on the opposite side of the Strait of Gibraltar from Ceuta.
Trinidad said Morocco tried once to get international recognition of the dispute and was turned away. “In the 1970s, Morocco asked the UN to include the territories on the list of ‘Non-Self-Governing Territories’ overseen by the UN’s Special Committee on Decolonisation, but the Moroccan request was ignored by the UN,” he said.
Life inside the enclaves, and what residents actually want
Roughly 84,000 people live in Ceuta and 86,000 in Melilla. Ceuta’s population includes Christian and Muslim residents, both Spanish and Moroccan, along with day workers who cross the border regularly. Residents there have generally described their daily coexistence as peaceful, though last week’s migrant surge tested that balance directly.
Hundreds of Ceuta residents rallied on Sunday, two days after the surge began, to block a planned far-right anti-migrant demonstration, and the pressure was enough to force organizers to cancel the event. Isabel, a Ceuta resident, described the strain the sudden influx placed on the enclave’s usual dynamic. “I am half Christian, half Muslim, as many in Ceuta are. We live peacefully together. But the numbers this time were scary,” she told Al Jazeera.
Melilla’s population is similarly mixed, with Spanish and Moroccan residents alongside small Jewish and Sindhi communities. The Sindhi community traces back to Hindu merchants who arrived after India’s partition in 1947. The Plazas de Soberanía, by contrast, are populated mainly by Spanish military personnel rather than civilian residents.
Despite the historical ties both cities maintain with Morocco, polling data shows most residents in Ceuta and Melilla want to remain part of Spain. Lakhloufi said that preference has held steady over time. “This has been reflected consistently in public opinion and in the absence of any significant political movement advocating a change in sovereignty,” he said. He added that the economic gap between Morocco and the enclaves plays a direct role in that preference. “Even the population with Moroccan origin want to stay as Spanish and European. This is because the social welfare difference between Morocco and the cities it’s really high,” he said.
At the same time, Lakhloufi said, daily life in both cities remains tied closely to Morocco. “Both cities maintain strong historical, cultural and economic ties with Morocco, making cooperation across the border an important aspect of daily life,” he said.
Special border rules set the enclaves apart from mainland Spain
Ceuta and Melilla fall within the Schengen area, the zone that allows free movement across much of the European Union, but they operate under a special regime rather than the standard Schengen rules. Travel between the enclaves and mainland Spain requires separate border checks, according to the Spanish government.
A Spanish government document explains how that, “Schengen checks are carried out on exit by sea or air, the only two routes available. Therefore, no one can travel from Ceuta or Melilla to mainland Spain without being identified by the National Police at the port or the airport. In addition, ferry operators and airlines are required to verify travel documents,” the document states.
A shift on Western Sahara adds another layer
In March 2022, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez wrote to Morocco’s king confirming Spanish support for Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, territory Spain had controlled until giving it up in 1975. Sánchez called the move “the most serious, realistic and credible” path toward resolving the long-running dispute over that region, and described it as opening “a new stage” in relations between Madrid and Rabat.
Cabré said that shift, combined with the pressure created by last week’s migrant surge, could eventually push Spain toward giving up its own claim on Ceuta and Melilla. “Their mere presence is an unsustainable historical anomaly at a time when the decolonisation of European states is being promoted at all levels, like European countries returning of items stolen during colonialism and recognising the citizenship rights of their former colonies,” she said.
Lakhloufi does not see that happening anytime soon. He said any changes coming out of last week’s crisis are more likely to affect border management than sovereignty itself. “What may change is the way Spain manages its relationship with Morocco, particularly regarding border management, migration and security cooperation. However, tactical adjustments should not be confused with a shift in Spain’s long-standing position on sovereignty,” he said. He also pointed out where the pressure in this relationship typically originates. “It’s usually Morocco that puts pressure on the borders, not Spain,” he said.
What happens next
With several thousand migrants still in Ceuta and tensions inside the enclave still elevated after Sunday’s counter-protest, Spain faces pressure to respond on two fronts at once: managing the immediate aftermath of the border surge and deciding how, if at all, that event reshapes its broader relationship with Morocco. Based on the assessments of researchers who study the dispute, a change in day-to-day border and security cooperation looks far more likely in the near term than any shift in Spain’s underlying claim to the territories. Public opinion inside Ceuta and Melilla, which has consistently favored remaining Spanish, gives Madrid little domestic incentive to alter that position regardless of how the migration crisis develops in the weeks ahead.
