European right-wing figures blame the escalation in the Ceuta enclave on Spain’s naturalisation policy, in what left-wing parties call opportunistic attacks.
On Thursday, thousands of migrants stormed the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, prompting Spain’s Interior Ministry to declare a national emergency and mobilise troops to restore order in the autonomous city.
Leading right-to-centre figures across Europe have seized on the escalation, accusing Madrid of losing control of its border and blaming the mass illegal crossings on Spain’s extraordinary regularisation of hundreds of thousands of migrants.
“Appalling situation at the Spanish border. The devastating images are the direct consequence of the pull factor of massive regularisation doubled with instrumentalisation of illegal migration,” Manfred Weber, leader of the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), wrote on X.
Right-wing attacks
The “pull effect” is the idea that generous reception conditions and other migration policies make a destination country more attractive, encouraging more arrivals. Here, the suggestion is that Spain raised expectations of future regularisations.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, of the hard-right Brothers of Italy party, went as far as proposing the suspension of the Schengen area with Spain, and announced extraordinary measures to defend Italy’s border.
“On illegal immigration, we will not yield an inch: defending the borders, stopping human traffickers, and ensuring effective repatriations will continue to be the line of this Government,” Meloni wrote on X.
The pull factor is not a scientifically proven phenomenon. Academic consensus holds that migration is driven primarily by “push” factors, such as war and political repression, while pull factors tend to stem from labour and welfare prospects.
Yet with most EU countries veering to the right, Spain has bucked the trend with a massive regularisation programme that drew over 1 million applicants — and the ire of right-wing politicians.
“The images coming from Ceuta show how the Madrid Government’s decision to grant Spanish, and therefore European, citizenship to over 500,000 irregular immigrants is profoundly wrong and encourages human trafficking,” Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani wrote on X.
Right-wing politicians in other member states argue that Spain has a responsibility to defend Europe’s external borders, since the resulting migratory inflows ultimately spill over into destination countries.
“Spanish authorities have recorded 50,000 illegal border crossings in Ceuta so far, with Germany likely the destination for most of these migrants,” Alice Weidel, leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany, wrote on X. “Germany must prepare itself: borders must be secured and rejections rigorously enforced.”
Jordan Bardella, France’s radical right leader who is the president of the Patriots for Europe Group in the European Parliament, sent a letter on Friday, seen by Euronews, asking President Roberta Metsola “to hold an urgent debate on the developments in Ceuta and on the failure of the European Union’s migration policies.”
Left-wing pushback
For left-wing politicians in Spain and abroad, these attacks are opportunistic. The Ceuta crisis, they say, has simply given critics an excuse to target the only alternative to right-wing migration policy left standing in Europe.
“In Europe, right-wing attitudes have prevailed in picturing migrants as a threat,” said MEP Juan Fernando López Aguilar (Spain/S&D), a former justice minister under the Zapatero government.
“Meaning that the humanitarian approach, which is the characteristic response of left-wing-led governments, as is the case of the Spanish government led by Pedro Sánchez, is not only being marginalised, it’s increasingly isolated,” López Aguilar said.
Experts such as Haizam Amirah Fernández, director of the Centre for Contemporary Arab Studies, point out that the current influx of irregular migrants into Ceuta could hardly have happened without the tacit approval of Moroccan authorities.
Another explanation points to human traffickers exploiting a Spanish Supreme Court ruling that pushbacks cannot be applied to migrants intercepted at sea while swimming into Ceuta or Melilla, as opposed to those climbing the border fence.
Spanish authorities say the recent regularisation applied only to people already on Spanish territory six months before applications opened, meaning new arrivals would not benefit from the measure.
For MEP Cecilia Strada (Italy/S&D), the attacks from the centre to the far-right reflect a clear intent to target Spain, since the Sánchez government has shown it is possible to have a credible progressive leader capable of managing migration flows by tackling its causes rather than its effects.
“This is right-wing propaganda at its worst. Before a humanitarian emergency with tens of deaths and an unknown number of missing people, one would expect European solidarity rather than instrumental attacks aimed at political profiteering,” Strada told Euronews.
Vincenzo Genovese contributed to the reporting.