Spanish Ceuta witnesses a deadly ‘game’ for Moroccan migrants

REPORTER'S NOTEBOOKThis weekend, thousands of Moroccans attempted to reach the Spanish North African enclave of Ceuta.For the past couple of days, I have commuted to work between Europe and Africa. When an estimated 60,000 migrants arrived in Ceuta, Spain’s autonomous outpost on the northern tip of Africa, from Morocco this week, businesses shut their doors and all available beds quickly disappeared.So, we have been staying in the mainland Spanish port city of Algeciras, taking the one-hour ferry to and from Ceuta.A fellow commuter is Isabel Hossein, a port police officer in Algeciras whose home is Ceuta. “I have documents, so it’s easy for me,” she says. “Sometimes I cross the border to Morocco just for lunch. Why not? The food is good.”Isabel says the mass influx of migrants on Wednesday and Thursday was overwhelming for the residents of Ceuta. “People were afraid; there were so many young men everywhere,” she said.“I am half Christian, half Muslim, as many in Ceuta are. We live peacefully together. But the numbers this time were scary.”It has got me thinking about the journeys we take. At Algeciras, hundreds of cars line up daily for the ferry to Tangier. Moroccans from all over Spain, and elsewhere in Europe, depart here to go home for the summer holidays.I am told that on motorways in Spain up to 1,000km away, the word “Algeciras” appears in Arabic to ensure people find their way here. They, of course, have documents.In Ceuta, on Saturday, I saw hundreds of young men making their way back to Morocco on foot, under the watchful, occasionally threatening, eye of the Spanish military.The undocumented onesExhausted by the heat, 48 hours earlier, the men swam to the shores of Ceuta.