Ceuta border crisis live: Migrants protest for asylum as Ceuta's doctors say the health system has collapsed

• Hundreds of migrants protest on El Trampolin beach and demand asylum instead of return
• Ceuta's doctors say the health system has collapsed as the minister insists it has not
• Reuters films Moroccan security dispersing migrants who tried to reach Ceuta
• Vox leader Santiago Abascal says Sanchez is deliberately abandoning Ceuta to Morocco
• Morocco expels EFE and TVE from Fnideq as Spain says it is seeking a solution

4:20am 17 August 2026 — Hundreds of migrants protest on El Trampolin beach and demand asylum instead of return

Hundreds of the migrants still in Ceuta staged a protest on El Trampolin beach on Sunday, asking Spain to grant them asylum rather than send them back to Morocco, Reuters reported from the city.

They carried banners reading that they do not want to go back to Morocco and that they are also human, and chanted that they are tired and need a solution. Between 5,000 and 8,000 people are still in the enclave out of the more than 72,000 who crossed a fortnight ago, most of them sleeping on the beach or on the outskirts.

“We're sleeping next to the sea, with cold and bad smells. We're suffering a lot.”

That was Ayoub Elarroud from Tetouan, who told Reuters police were keeping migrants out of the city centre. Another man, Mohammed Ouanzar, said he felt reborn once he reached Spanish soil.

Fernando Grande-Marlaska has already said that people who entered irregularly will not stay in Ceuta, will not travel on to mainland Spain and will not be given legal status except in rare cases of vulnerability. The protest is a demand that he reverse all three.

2:50am 17 August 2026 — Ceuta's doctors say the health system has collapsed as the minister insists it has not

Ceuta's college of physicians says the city's health system has collapsed, and Spain's Health Minister Monica Garcia flew in on Sunday to tell the city it has not.

“There is no healthcare collapse in Ceuta, only strained areas.”

She named accident and emergency and the medical and surgical wards as the strained ones, put the hospital at 50% occupancy, and said no consultations had been cancelled and no staff leave withdrawn. Her department has put more than 60 extra professionals into the city until 31 August, taking the workforce to 1,465 against the 1,000 the staffing plan plans for.

Her own figures show 5,800 migrants treated in 15 days in a city of about 83,000 people. Garcia also said overcrowding carries a public health risk, which she rated moderate for the migrants themselves and low for residents. The PP has called for her resignation.

The Spanish doctor in the footage below says the minister will not speak to her. Ceuta's medics have been describing tuberculosis, measles and scabies since the crossing, and Madrid's answer has been 60 staff on a contract that runs out in a fortnight.

2:20am 17 August 2026 — Reuters films Moroccan security dispersing migrants who tried to reach Ceuta

Reuters published its own footage on Sunday of Moroccan security forces breaking up groups of migrants who had tried to cross into Ceuta after the online calls for a mass rush, the agency posted.

Morocco intercepted at least 294 people around Fnideq on Saturday, 248 of them sub-Saharan Africans and 46 Moroccan nationals, and used tear gas on the hills about 3km from the Tarajal crossing.

Rabat is doing the enforcement that Madrid cannot do on the Moroccan side of the line, and it is doing it two weeks after letting more than 72,000 people through.

1:40am 17 August 2026 — AFP films scores of migrants intercepted near Ceuta as its correspondent works the border

Scores of migrants, most of them from sub-Saharan Africa, were intercepted in Morocco near the Ceuta border on Sunday and an AFP correspondent watched it happen.

AFP had a reporter on the Moroccan side filing pictures on Sunday. On Saturday the Moroccan Interior Ministry ordered the teams from Spain's EFE and TVE out of Fnideq, told them their hotels wanted them gone and warned that their credentials and equipment could be seized.

Two weeks after the crossing that brought more than 72,000 people into an enclave of about 83,000, who gets to film the border is being decided in Rabat.

11:20pm 16 August 2026 — Mario Nawfal posts footage of Ceuta two weeks on and says this is what the city looks like

The commentator Mario Nawfal put up footage of Ceuta on Sunday and told his followers this is what their city looks like now if they live there, in a post aimed at the people who called the arrivals refugees and asked for empathy, Nawfal wrote.

Nawfal runs a large aggregation account rather than a bureau in Ceuta, and the argument in the post is his. What sits underneath it is on the record, because Ceuta's prosecutors have 12 sexual assault complaints, its doctors have reported tuberculosis, measles and scabies, and its residents have restarted the street patrols they last ran in 2021.

American accounts have been coming to Ceuta since the crossing and the White House has already tied the enclave to what it calls far-left globalist migration policy. Spain's government has spent the fortnight arguing about how the pictures are framed rather than about who let the crossing happen.

11:03pm 16 August 2026 — Footage shows hundreds gathering on Ceuta's beaches to demand asylum and housing

Hundreds of Moroccan migrants gathered on Ceuta's beaches on Sunday to demand asylum in mainland Spain along with housing and access to benefits, according to footage posted from the city.

Reuters reached the same protest later in the day and reported it from El Trampolin beach, where the demand was asylum instead of return to Morocco. The account that posted this footage first also lists free housing and social benefits, which the wire copy does not carry.

Juan Vivas asked Fernando Grande-Marlaska on Thursday to switch off asylum claims in Ceuta altogether and has still not been answered. The people on the beach are asking for the opposite, and the government has not given either side a decision.

5:07pm 16 August 2026 — Vox leader Santiago Abascal says Sanchez is deliberately abandoning Ceuta to Morocco

The Vox leader Santiago Abascal accused Pedro Sanchez's government on Sunday of abandoning Ceuta on purpose in order to hand it to Morocco, Abascal posted.

“The Government's abandonment of Ceuta is deliberate and it has a purpose: to demoralise the people of Ceuta so that they throw in the towel, and to make handing the city over to Morocco easier.”

He went on to say Sanchez should end up in prison for it and tagged the post traitor. Abascal produced no evidence that the government intends to give the city up, and Madrid has said repeatedly that the Spanish status of Ceuta and Melilla is not open for discussion, most recently after Morocco's Justice Minister Abdellatif Ouahbi said Rabat wanted to negotiate over both cities.

Vox has gained more from the crossing than any other party in Spain. The charge Abascal is making is his own, but the sequence he is pointing at is real, because Morocco raised sovereignty a fortnight after the crossing while Spain was depending on Rabat to take people back.

2:15pm 16 August 2026 — Morocco expels EFE and TVE from Fnideq as Spain says it is seeking a solution

Morocco ordered the teams from Spain's national news agency EFE and the public broadcaster TVE out of Fnideq on Saturday while its own security forces were clearing the hills above the Ceuta border, EFE reported.

The hotels where the journalists were staying told them local authorities wanted them out of their rooms immediately. An Interior Ministry representative who had already asked the two teams to leave the town gave no reason for it, and warned that their press credentials and equipment could be taken off them if they stayed.

“Following instructions.”

That was as much explanation as the Moroccan official offered. EFE says it has had no reply from the Interior Ministry in Rabat, and the communications director at the Ministry of Youth, Culture and Communication told the agency he was trying to establish what had happened.

Madrid said on Saturday that it defends press freedom everywhere and that the Spanish embassy in Rabat is in contact with the reporters and with Moroccan authorities. Morocco's second public channel 2M complained earlier this month that Spanish authorities had kept one of its crews out of Ceuta, and Moroccan commentators have been setting the two decisions against each other since.

Spain depends on Rabat to keep taking people back, and the reporters sent to cover that arrangement have been moved on by the government providing it.

2:05pm 16 August 2026 — Morocco's Fnideq interceptions reach 294 as tear gas clears the border hills

Moroccan security forces intercepted at least 294 people around Fnideq on Saturday, 248 of them from sub-Saharan Africa and 46 Moroccan nationals, security sources told the Spanish news agency EFE.

That is the running total to 2.45pm local time and it supersedes the 111 arrests Morocco released before dawn. Hundreds of people, most of them sub-Saharan Africans, came down out of a mountainous area about 3km from the Tarajal crossing and were met with tear gas.

Two weeks ago more than 70,000 people crossed into Ceuta over two days. The Supreme Court ruling of 8 July has not changed since then and neither have the smuggling networks selling their reading of it, so what stopped Saturday's attempt was Morocco putting more than 3,000 personnel on the line.

6:38am 16 August 2026 — Spain and Morocco hold their border deployment in place with no new crossing reported

Spain and Morocco have kept a heavy security deployment around Ceuta into Sunday and no new mass crossing has been reported, the French news account Cerfia posted overnight.

The call that circulated on Facebook and TikTok named Saturday 15 August, and it produced arrests on the Moroccan side rather than a crossing. Both governments have left their reinforcements where they are.

6:30am 16 August 2026 — Morocco's forces hold the Fnideq line and Ceuta's second mass rush fails

Morocco detained 111 people around Fnideq in the early hours of Saturday and the second mass crossing into Ceuta, called online for 15 August, did not happen, Moroccan security sources said.

Of those held, 109 were from sub-Saharan Africa and two were Moroccan nationals, and a further 61 people have been arrested over the social media posts that called the crossing. Around 300 people came down out of the hills towards the border on Saturday morning before public forces moved them back. Al Jazeera reported heavy deployment through the Tarajal border region and a temporary calm holding there by Saturday night.

Spain spent the week reinforcing its own side with National Police, Civil Guard and military, cancelling leave and putting floating barriers in the water, and the crossing was still stopped on Moroccan territory by Moroccan police. Morocco's justice minister Abdellatif Ouahbi spent the same fortnight asking Madrid to negotiate the status of Ceuta and Melilla.

6:18am 16 August 2026 — Moroccan authorities intercepted dozens more migrants heading for Ceuta on Saturday

Moroccan authorities intercepted dozens more people trying to reach Ceuta through Saturday, Insider Paper reported, on top of the 111 held around Fnideq before dawn.

Morocco has not published a running total for the day. The figures it has released cover the Fnideq operation and the 61 arrests over the social media posts that called the crossing.

5:27am 16 August 2026 — Catalan account CADCI claims Morocco used migrants as cover for a second assault

The Catalan account CADCI posted footage on Saturday and claimed Morocco's own forces had pushed sub-Saharan migrants towards the border first while holding Moroccan nationals back for a later attempt, in a post it labelled breaking news.

CADCI is a Catalan campaign account and not an authority on either side of the border. No Spanish or Moroccan official has described the day that way, and Morocco's own account of Saturday is that its forces dispersed the gathering and detained 111 people. The claim sits in the card, attributed to the account that made it.

5:21am 16 August 2026 — The BBC picks up Ceuta as Morocco confirms it detained dozens at the border

The BBC ran the Ceuta detentions on Saturday night, reporting that Morocco had detained dozens of migrants trying to cross into the enclave.

The story has been carried this weekend by Reuters, the Telegraph, the Guardian, Al Jazeera and Anadolu. Two weeks ago the crossing of more than 70,000 people took days to reach the same outlets.

4:25am 16 August 2026 — Footage shows how Ceuta is housing women and girls apart after the assault reports

Footage posted on Saturday shows women and girls in Ceuta sleeping on thin mats laid on the floor, in accommodation separated off after the reports of sexual assaults, in a post that asks where Spain's equality ministers are.

The account names Irene Montero, Ione Belarra and Ana Redondo and says none of them has been to the city. Neither Montero, Belarra nor Redondo has issued a statement on Ceuta since the crossing.

What is on the court record is 12 sexual assault complaints lodged with Ceuta's courts since 30 July, and a National Police investigation into the alleged rape of a girl who crossed on 30 July.

3:39am 16 August 2026 — Video circulates of a man pinned by bystanders in Ceuta after an alleged street attack

Footage circulating since Saturday shows a man held face down on a Ceuta street by several other men until police arrive, in a clip the French account that posted it says shows a Moroccan man who had violently attacked a Spanish woman to rob her, the account wrote.

That description is the account's own and it is anonymous. No Spanish police statement, court listing or named news outlet has confirmed who the man in the video is, what he is alleged to have done or whether anyone was charged, so the clip stands as footage of a detention and nothing more has been established about it.

What is on the record in Ceuta is 12 sexual assault complaints lodged with the courts since 30 July, a National Police investigation into the alleged rape of a girl who crossed on 30 July, and residents in several neighbourhoods running their own street patrols because they say the police cannot get there.

12:36am 16 August 2026 — James Klug films Ceuta two weeks on and puts the blame on Sanchez by name

The American video journalist James Klug filmed Ceuta on Saturday and said the city is still being left to deal with the aftermath on its own, tagging Pedro Sanchez directly in the post.

Klug is one of a number of American accounts that have gone to Ceuta since the crossing. The White House has already tied the enclave to what it calls far-left globalist migration policy, and Trump has said this is what America looks like in three years if the wrong side wins.

12:08am 16 August 2026 — Every migrant intercepted at Fnideq will be moved away from the border, Kettani says

Everyone picked up in the Fnideq operation will be removed from the border area, the Moroccan journalist Ali Kettani posted on Saturday.

Morocco has used the same method before, busing people south and away from the coast rather than charging them. It is the part of the arrangement Spain depends on, and it happens on Moroccan soil where Spanish courts and the 8 July ruling do not reach.

10:50pm 15 August 2026 — Spain's border unions warned the Interior Ministry three times and got no reply

Spain's Civil Guard and police unions wrote to the Interior Ministry three times in the three weeks before the Ceuta crossing and were not answered, Reuters reported on Saturday.

The Civil Guard association AUGC wrote on 10 July that the court ruling had opened a legal loophole and asked for clear protocols for the officers working the border. The police union SUP followed on 13 July, warning that criminal networks would adapt their routes and methods to exploit it, and wrote again on 23 July reporting constant arrivals by sea and asking for a temporary reception centre. Union representatives told Reuters the ministry did not respond to their requests, and that a meeting with the government's representative in Ceuta was offered weeks later.

More than 70,000 people crossed on 30 and 31 July. Spain put its floating barrier in the water on 1 August.

The government rejects the suggestion it failed to prepare and says it studied the options and had the barrier deployed within 48 hours of deciding on it. The three union letters are dated 10, 13 and 23 July, between one and three weeks before the crossing began.

10:23pm 15 August 2026 — HJB News posts what Ceuta's beaches looked like before the July crossing

Footage of Ceuta's beaches as they were before 30 July was posted on Saturday, by the account HJB News, set against the state the same stretches are in now.

The beaches have run through this blog all week, from the tents at the Tarajal industrial estate to Javier Negre calling the shoreline a shanty camp and Sara Gonzalez asking why Ceuta's 3,000 euro littering fines were not applied. Residents face those fines and nobody who crossed has been issued one.

9:23pm 15 August 2026 — Migrants stopped near Ceuta were carrying picks and tools to break the border fence

Some of the people intercepted by Moroccan security forces near Ceuta on Saturday were carrying picks and other tools for breaking through the border fence, the Catalan public broadcaster 3Cat reported. About thirty people were held in that group.

The July crossing was made mostly by people swimming around the Tarajal breakwater, and Spain's Supreme Court ruling of 8 July bars summary returns only for people who never crossed a physical barrier. The border fence is that physical barrier, so anyone caught cutting through it can still be sent straight back.

9:07pm 15 August 2026 — Footage shows groups running through Ceuta's streets as security forces struggle

Groups of migrants were filmed running through Ceuta's streets on Saturday morning while security forces tried to contain them, in footage posted by Europa.com.

Fernando Grande-Marlaska put the number still in the city at about 5,000 when he spoke to reporters on Friday, well below the 8,000 to 9,000 Ceuta's president Juan Vivas has been using all week. Around 500 asylum claims have been processed so far and the large majority were rejected.

Moroccan security sources described Ceuta and Melilla as normal and under control on Saturday, which was an assessment of the border crossings. The roughly 5,000 people who came in a fortnight ago are still inside the city and Ceuta still has no agreed place to put them.

8:58pm 15 August 2026 — Moroccan forces disperse hundreds coming down from the hills above Fnideq

Hundreds of people, most of them from sub-Saharan Africa, came down out of the mountains above Fnideq on Saturday morning and were dispersed by Moroccan security forces before they reached the Ceuta border, in footage posted by Europa.com.

This is the gathering the 111 arrests came out of. People had moved into the hills overnight to be in position for the crossing called for 15 August, which is the same staging Spanish intelligence reported seeing before 30 July.

8:28pm 15 August 2026 — More footage of groups running through Ceuta's streets as soldiers try to hold the city

A second account has posted footage of groups of migrants running through Ceuta's streets while soldiers try to contain them, filmed on Saturday and posted by Alerta Global.

“Chaos in Ceuta. Groups of illegal immigrants running through the streets while the military try to control the situation.”

That is the account's caption and it campaigns against illegal immigration, so the words are its own. The footage covers the same Saturday disorder that Europa.com filmed on the other side of the city, and Spain has soldiers on those streets because it sent the army in after 30 July and has not taken it out.

9:01am 15 August 2026 — Reuters reports Spain has reinforced Ceuta as online calls for another rush continue

Spain has stepped up security in Ceuta as calls circulate online for another mass rush at the border, Reuters reported on Friday night, putting a wire service behind what the city's own paper and the Spanish government have been describing all week.

The date those calls name is today. Ceuta's authorities are working on the basis that thousands will try again, and Madrid has spent the fortnight since 30 July describing the situation as back under control.

6:08am 15 August 2026 — The Tarajal industrial estate fills with tents and refuse as residents film the decay

Footage filmed on Friday at the industrial estate beside the Tarajal border crossing shows tents pitched between the units and refuse piled along the roadway, at the same site where Europa Press has been filming unaccompanied minors gathering since the crossing began.

The account that posted it, Una Ardilla Enfurecida, filmed the same stretch a few days ago and says it has got worse since. Benny Johnson posted his own footage of the tents and refuse on Friday.

Where any of these people are meant to go is still unsettled. The environmental association DAUBMA on Friday rejected a proposal to put a settlement in the old chalets at the port and argued for the Tarajal warehouses instead, which are the same warehouses the government has said it will use to hold people before deporting them.

Two weeks after the crossing, Ceuta still has no agreed place to put the people who are in it.

6:02am 15 August 2026 — Spanish women are leaving Ceuta over fear of sexual assaults, Unai Cano reports

Spanish women have started leaving Ceuta because they are frightened of being attacked, according to the journalist Unai Cano, who posted footage of residents on Friday saying the government has abandoned them.

“We feel humiliated by Pedro Sánchez.”

Cano goes further and says the government is allowing daily rapes of girls in Spain, which is his characterisation rather than a figure any authority has published. What is on the record is the 12 sexual assault complaints lodged with Ceuta's courts since 30 July, with police sources saying the true number is higher because most of the cases have no identified suspect.

Madrid has not addressed the departures. Ceuta's president Juan Vivas asked on Thursday for asylum claims in the city to be switched off and got no answer, and the city is now watching its own residents leave.

12:20am 15 August 2026 — Marlaska is jeered as a coward and a traitor and leaves Ceuta without taking questions

Spain's Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska was jeered by residents as he arrived at the Government Delegation in Ceuta on Thursday.

“Coward!”, “Traitor!”, “Government resign!”

Marlaska announced 45 more police officers for the city and about twenty officials to speed up expulsion paperwork. He went from his official car into the building without stopping and took no questions from the residents outside, and Laura García of the police union JUPOL said afterwards that he had run out and called him a coward.

Vivas had used the same visit to ask him to suspend asylum claims in Ceuta and got no answer, and what the city was given instead was 45 officers.

4:54am 15 August 2026 — Morocco puts 3,000 security personnel on the Ceuta border for the 15 August crossing call

Morocco has put more than 3,000 security personnel around Ceuta, laid fresh razor wire and built new barriers at the Tarajal crossing before the mass swim called for today, according to El Faro de Ceuta, the city's own daily. Moroccan forces have been watching the roads, the hills and the coastline, monitoring social media accounts and making arrests, among them a 20-year-old detained in Tiznit on suspicion of recruiting people online.

Spain has sent police, Civil Guard and military reinforcements over from the mainland, cancelled leave for officers already in Ceuta, and put GRS riot units and a GAR tactical team on the fence, after the CNI warned that movement was building on the Moroccan side. Equality Minister Ana Redondo said a mass entry from Morocco cannot be allowed to happen again. Ceuta's authorities are working on the basis that thousands will try today, and DW reports the enclave is preparing for another mass arrival.

The 8 July Supreme Court ruling that smuggling networks sold as an open door has not changed, and neither has the asylum system Vivas asked Madrid to switch off on Thursday. What has changed in a fortnight is the number of officers standing on the sand. The scale of what both governments have moved to the border this week is its own account of what was missing on 30 July.