Rabat – Spanish media, including the Spanish news agency EFE, reported a new wave of social media posts calling for another mass attempt to reach the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in mid-August.
EFE said messages circulating on social media, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and WhatsApp, urge people to gather in the Moroccan city of Fnideq, also known as Castillejos.
Morocco World News (MWN) verified the reports and was able to detect accounts calling for a mass crossing on August 15.
One of the posts alleges that the Tarajal border in Ceuta will “be open” on August 15, a holiday in Spain.
“There might be crowds as people travel for the holiday,” the post reads. Many of the posts have gone viral, but MWN could not verify their origin.
Many reports, including those from Spanish news outlets, emphasized that similar messages are being spread by anonymous accounts, with some attributed to Algerian phone numbers.
An open-source intelligence report by Spanish security analyst José María “Chema” Gil Garré says the attempted mass crossing into Ceuta on July 30-31 was preceded by a digital mobilization campaign that intensified over several weeks.
One of the report’s main findings is the identification of at least two public WhatsApp groups administered from phone numbers using Algeria’s international dialing code, +213.
Morocco and Spain expressed frustration after the mass crossing into Ceuta on July 30, which saw more than 40,000 entries into the enclave.
Spanish authorities insist the number is much higher than Morocco’s official figures, claiming over 70,000 people crossed into the enclave.
While some Spanish officials backed Morocco for its essential support, others alleged that Rabat facilitated the migration to pressure Madrid.
A Moroccan government source, however, slammed the critics, emphasizing that responding to such challenges is a shared responsibility and stressing that Rabat is not “Europe’s concierge.”
The source also explained that nobody alerted Morocco about the crisis beforehand and reiterated that the exploitation of digital platforms was behind the crossings.
The incident is neither the result of temporary circumstances nor spontaneous developments, the source stated, recalling the Spanish court’s decision to disallow the immediate return of migrants arriving by sea as one of the major factors exploited by human trafficking networks.
