Meknes – A Moroccan man successfully set out to swim back home with his 7-year-old son from Ceuta, one of Spain’s enclaves in northern Morocco, on Saturday.
The man was stranded in Ceuta since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and ultimately, determined to return home to Moroccan soil, made the journey with a swim across the Benzu embankment. Eyewitnesses testified that the man’s son wore a life jacket, Spanish El Faro de Ceuta reported.
Upon returning to Morocco, the father and son were required to enter quarantine before rejoining their family.
Some other Moroccans stranded in Ceuta have made their way back home through swimming, as the sole way for them to reunite with their families after the closing of land borders between Morocco and Ceuta.
In a similar story, a Moroccan woman managed to swim back to Morocco on August 25. El Faro de Ceuta qualified her trip as an “odyssey” for her “heroic” move.
On April 7, five young Moroccans tried to make their way back in the same fashion. Four were able to reach the Castillejos beach in the northern town of Fnideq. The fifth fell in the hands of the Spanish Civil Guard.
The story of the Moroccan man, his 7-year-old son, and their swim home did not escape anti-Morocco narratives. El Faro de Ceuta wrote that despite a decline in such repatriation journeys, “the migratory pressure exerted by Moroccans swimming towards Ceuta, fleeing from Morocco, continues constantly.”
