In the global café-tertulia of the internet, it is frequently remarked that Spain is reliving its own ‘Crisis of 1898’ — that definitive national trauma which began with the loss of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. The digital armchair commentators are not entirely mistaken.
Spanish security forces are now on alert for a rumoured second attempt on Ceuta tomorrow. Though the authorities play down these reports as misinformation and most likely a hoax, accounts on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok have gained huge traction with the slogans ‘al-hajma’ (meaning ‘the offensive’ or ‘the onslaught’) and ‘15/08’ on videos of migrants entering through border checkpoints, and replies such as ‘see you all there’. Clickbait (or possibly a Moroccan government smokescreen) may be the most likely explanation, but it is hardly surprising if another violation of Spanish territorial integrity is on the table given the haphazard positioning of the government.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez responded to the Ceuta migration crisis with the utmost frivolity: a cocktail of lukewarm measures, half-truths, and, amidst all of the chaos, he thought it an opportune moment to share his Spotify summer playlist on social media. Featuring on the playlist were ‘SS26’ by Charli XCX, ‘Tantas Cosas’ by Melani, smatterings of Madonna, Gorillaz, Stereolab, and his stated ‘No. 1’ — ‘EL BAIFO’ by Quevedo.
While tens of thousands of people continued to overwhelm the autonomous city and dozens of deaths were recorded, Sánchez ensconced himself in a holiday in Lanzarote. He will stay there until 25th August, pas mal. His supporters argue that everyone has a right to rest. To quell the backlash, a panicking Moncloa hurriedly posted a photograph of Sánchez apparently working at his desk — though with such misfortune that the Spanish Prime Minister appeared legless in the frame. Commenters also point out the absence of cables into the free-standing monitor. The video of that moment is arguably worse: Sánchez is seen moving an optical mouse across a glass table without a mat. For those unaware, optical mice do not work on a glass surface. Triviality makes a poor match for a crisis of this magnitude — a lesson, I suspect, the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is also yet to learn.
The Ceuta crisis — roughly 70,000 irregular entries in just a few hours —exposed the harrowing fragility of Europe’s southern border. Documents indicate that the 2026 migrant surge was seven times greater than that of 2021 (70,000 entries compared to 10,000). Sánchez is not the only one who must offer a mea culpa; the Spanish Supreme Court also bears responsibility, having ruled last June that pushbacks at the border could not be carried out if the crossing occurred by water.
One can reasonably say that Giorgia Meloni’s Italian government reacted quite diligently to the chaos by suspending Schengen free movement for third-country nationals arriving from Spain. The measure caught thousands of Spanish tourists off guard, forcing them into humiliating queues at various Italian airports. Sánchez responded with a measure bordering on the comical: random checks at maritime and air borders specifically targeting Italians.
The resolve that any serious nation would have directed toward Rabat, the Spanish PM instead directed theatrically toward Rome. Valle-Inclán, the writer belonging to the generation that lost the colonies, would surely repeat his famous barb with malice: ‘Spain is a grotesque deformation of European civilisation.’ The phrase, perhaps once excessive, now resonates with renewed force.
The New Role of Morocco
Some media outlets and numerous open-source intelligence (OSINT) analysts point out that the Moroccan satellites Mohammed VI-A and Mohammed VI-B made frequent passes over the area in the days leading up to and following the human avalanche. Regardless of the veracity of these reports, the reality remains that Morocco has demonstrated that the borders of the Spanish enclaves in Africa are tissue-thin.
The crisis is not merely a Hispano-Moroccan affair. In a context of sudden geopolitical realignment, the United States is seeking reliable partners on the western flank of the Mediterranean. Morocco has proved adept at capitalising on this need. Spanish weakness is perceived with clarity, compounded by the fact that data from Sánchez’s own mobile phone is in Rabat’s possession. The Spanish piel de toro (‘bull’s hide’) is suffering, and the Moroccans know very well how to work the leather. Dreams of a ‘Greater Morocco’ no longer appear to be a hashish-induced utopia.
Foreign contributors to Pimlico Journal may be more bellicose than the state itself. Spain possesses very limited military and, most importantly of all, political capacity to convincingly defend Ceuta and Melilla. The formal sovereignty of these enclaves exists only on the pages of the Spanish Constitution; their effective defence, however, depends largely on their neighbour’s goodwill and the meagre support of allies like the United States, which tirelessly weaves the political twilight of the Spanish Prime Minister.
The siege against Sánchez is such that even Gianni Infantino, the head of FIFA, hinted at hosting the 2030 World Cup — currently expected to be jointly hosted by Spain, Portugal, and Morocco — entirely in Morocco. ‘The 2030 World Cup will be the best in history because it will be held in the most beautiful country of all: Morocco’, Infantino remarked, oblivious to the fact that 70,000 people sought to flee that ‘beautiful’ country in a single day.
Spanish Ataraxia
Although Ceuta and Melilla may be described geographically as enclaves, and although Morocco presents them as colonial vestiges, they do not legally hold that status. In 1975, Rabat attempted to have them included on the UN list of Non-Self-Governing Territories pending decolonisation, but the Special Committee de facto rejected the request and never incorporated them. Their decision was grounded in the Latin aphorism prior tempore, potior iure [‘he who is first in time is stronger in right’]: Spain’s rights over these two autonomous cities predate the creation of the Kingdom of Morocco and prevail over any subsequent claim. Unlike Ceuta and Melilla, the Falkland Islands have been on that list since 1946, as has Gibraltar. Following the events in Ceuta, it will be difficult for Spanish demands for the decolonisation of Gibraltar to be seen as anything more than tissue-thin rhetoric. Furthermore, two official referendums have been held in Gibraltar regarding its sovereignty and its relationship with Spain and the United Kingdom (in 1967 and 2002). In both instances, the population overwhelmingly rejected any move towards Spain or the ceding of sovereignty to it.
However, legality is one thing; reality is another. Even if Ceuta and Melilla are structurally incorporated parts of the nation according to the Spanish Constitution, there is a very real perception of vulnerability. Morocco operates in a ‘grey zone’ where migration is successfully utilised as a tool of diplomatic pressure. This is not a new tactic; Turkey has used similar pressure against Germany for half a century.
Pedro Sánchez’s response — sharing his ‘Summer 2026’ playlist while the city was being overrun — is a mark of a superficiality that Spanish writers and commentators have not overlooked, even if it was in the Anglophone world. Figures such as Arturo Pérez-Reverte and Fernando Savater have publicly expressed their unease at what they consider a loss of sovereignty and international prestige. For these perennially vehement authors, Sánchez’s pivot regarding Western Sahara is not diplomacy but a capitulation to Rabat’s blackmail; a surrender reminiscent of the ceding of the last colonies to the pressure of superior powers a century ago.
The long and storied pain of literary Spanishness has a root cause. It grew alongside the mirage that Spain, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and especially during the Aznar era (1996-2004), could ‘put itself back on the map’ under the American umbrella. Today, with the world’s axis shifting toward the Pacific, that pseudo-imperial vision of Spain has been sidelined. The giant Spanish flag in Madrid is merely the phallic sublimation of impotence.
Such is the shift in the political subsoil — and current Sánchez’s political orphancy — that the United States is considering moving its Spanish bases at Morón and Rota to the Ksar Sghir base in Tangier. Madrid’s refusal to support American operations against Iran served as the catalyst for this punishment.
The End of a Cycle
The Ceuta crisis is not the end, but likely the beginning of a deeper transition. If Trump consolidates Morocco as a preferred partner, he will accelerate the reconfiguration of the Western Mediterranean. The European Union, far from sanctioning Rabat, now fears losing a useful collaborator in the outsourced control of borders. This explains why the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, congratulated both Rabat and Madrid on their management of the crisis — a truly surreal gesture given that this ‘management’ resulted in a minimum of 88 deaths.
Sánchez acts today as a katechon who, with great difficulty, restrains entropic forces far greater than the chaos upon which he feeds. When the current Spanish Prime Minister exits the stage, it will not merely be a change of government; it will unleash impulses that Spanish democracy has contained — sometimes with violence — for nearly five decades. Waiting in the wings is a Cainite, vain, and revanchist Spanish right wing that could lead to a presidential republic. If that occurs, such a republic will be scarcely fit to contain the centrifugal impulses of the entire peninsula. Perhaps, in the end — as President Cánovas del Castillo warned in 1876 — the Spanish will indeed be those ‘who cannot be anything else’.
For the moment, this is all speculation. Let us enjoy Pedro Sánchez’s summer playlist on Spotify, the modern equivalent to listening to the violins of the Titanic as it sinks. Pío Baroja summarised this with cruel precision over a century ago: ‘In Spain, everything that is official is absurd, it is grotesque.’ Sánchez’s soundtrack is part of that most absurd continuity.
This article was written by Francesc-Xavier Soria Jofra, a historian and educator in Córdoba, Argentina. Have a pitch? Send it to submissions@pimlicojournal.co.uk.
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I must say that of late the quality of output on Pimlico Journal is really good, I shall have to start giving you money.
Very 2026 for the FIFA presidency to become a theatre of the Israeli Gaza war. The whole World Cup dimension is going to keep people outside Spain a lot more invested in this conflict than they otherwise might be.