The year 2018 saw a spike in migrant arrivals to Spain through the sea and the fences of Ceuta and Melilla. This was due to:
Spain's government provoked a "call effect" by offering migrants greater facilities to obtain nationality.
A football match between Real Madrid and Barsa that took place this summer in Spain.
the agreements signed between Italy and Libya in 2017, which led to the blocking of this route, and following the return agreement between Greece and Turkey in 2018.
Pedro Sánchez, Prime Minister of Spain and a member of the PSOE socialist workers' party, promised at the beginning of his term of office, better days for migration. On 26 July 2018, 612 people managed to jump the fence in Ceuta. Faced with this fact, the government decided to:
Expel at least 27 people through a procedure called "expulsiones en caliente", which is carried out by the Guardia Civil at the foot of the fence, without any process of identification of the people returned and without offering them legal support, that is, without discerning whether they are unaccompanied minors or people in need of international protection.
Offer people a process of legal assistance together with lawyers and translators to discern whether they are asylum seekers or minors, in both cases people in need of protection.
Return as many people as possible as they were involved in a mafia or terrorist group, and carried out violent actions directly against state security forces and endangering the Spanish nation.
According to the Minister of the Interior, Grande-Marlaska, the 27 migrants expelled to Morocco in the fence jump of 26 July:
had not really been expelled as they would not have reached Spanish territory, which is not demarcated by the physical fence which they overcame but by the Guardia Civil Corps protecting the fence.
they were not really migrants but a paramilitary corps whose aim was to attack Spain.
they were attended to in Morocco by international organizations for the protection of asylum seekers who claimed them after the jump.
After the leap of 26 July 2018, the Spanish government interceded on behalf of Morocco with the European Union to:
recognise Morocco's sovereignty over the Sahrawi territory.
implement safe routes for sub-Saharan migrants passing through Morocco on their way to Europe.
requesting that the European Union provide Morocco with 55 million euros from the Emergency Trust Fund for Africa to reinforce border management strategies in Morocco. populations.
On 22 August 2018, 116 people managed to cross the fences of Ceuta. In this occasion the spanish government:
carried out a new method of expulsions by collectively expelling in the following 24 hours the 116 persons who had managed to reach Ceuta.
blaming Morocco for not doing its job of protecting Europe's borders properly.
transferred them directly to the peninsula to reception centres, as the CETI exceeded its capacity.