Roughly 60,000 people crossed from Morocco into Spain's North African enclave of Ceuta over two days last week, the largest migration surge the tiny territory has ever recorded, and the fallout has done more damage to the European Union's internal relations than to its external border.
According to Al Jazeera's initial reporting, roughly 1,500 to 2,000 migrants had already entered Ceuta over the preceding ten days, after a Spanish Supreme Court ruling earlier in July found that migrants intercepted at sea attempting to reach Ceuta or Melilla could not be summarily returned to Morocco.
Spain has since announced construction of a 500-meter floating containment barrier along the sea approach to prevent a repeat crossing by water, the route that this surge exploited.
Italy, under Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's government, temporarily reinstated border checks on arrivals from Spain and called for Spain's exclusion from the Schengen zone, and Finland and Denmark backed the suspension push, according to Newsweek .
The 2021 surge, roughly 10,000 to 12,000 people over two days, was widely read at the time as Rabat signaling displeasure with Madrid over an unrelated diplomatic dispute, by loosening enforcement on its side of the border.
A record 60,000 migrants crossed into Spain's Ceuta enclave in two days, killing at least 67. The crisis is already over, but the EU fight it triggered, over Schengen threats and Frontex power, is not.