Spain’s Defence Minister has told parliament that the intelligence services detected a call to cross into Ceuta the day before tens of thousands of migrants entered the enclave, and that they passed what they had to the security forces and the Government Delegation.
Margarita Robles said on August 25 that the National Intelligence Centre (CNI) and the Armed Forces Intelligence Centre (CIFAS) had carried out the work required of them and had “shared and analysed” it with the police and Civil Guard and with the delegation.
On her account to the Congress of Deputies defence committee, a call circulated on WhatsApp and Facebook on July 29 urging people to swim round the breakwater and climb the fence the following day, timed to coincide with Morocco’s Throne Day celebrations. Some of the groups had as many as 180,000 followers.
The two services had registered a clear rise in migratory pressure on the frontier between July 8 and 30, she said, largely through Facebook pages calling for a mass entry. Those pages were later replaced by restricted-access channels and by TikTok videos filmed during the crossing itself.
Minutes after she finished, at the press conference following the first cabinet meeting after the summer recess, Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said “there was no report” that anticipated what took place on July 30, 2026.
Marlaska argued that had anything of that scale been detected, it would have reached the highest levels of the State. No allied service had seen it coming either, he said.
The Government Delegation in Ceuta has said in a statement that it received no report warning of what would happen on July 30, though it was sent communications during the month about rising arrivals by sea. It has no authority over the CNI, it added, and the service has its own channels to the authorities.
The CNI is attached to the Ministry of Defence and reports directly to Robles.
It is the second time the two ministers have differed in public on the point. Robles defended the CNI against suggestions it had failed to warn on August 3, during a visit to a military base in Zaragoza, northeast Spain.
Border monitoring picked up entire families gathering at the Tarajal breakwater at about 11am on July 30, the minister said. The mass entry began half an hour later and reached a flow of 5,200 people an hour.
Between 45,000 and 55,000 migrants were in the city by 8pm and about 60,000 by 7am the next morning. Robles put the total at close to 80,000 and said roughly 90 per cent had returned to Morocco by August 1.
Spain’s interior ministry has put the number entering irregularly in the final days of the month at some 72,000. Ceuta forms with Melilla the European Union’s only land border with Africa.
Robles said 3,060 troops remained deployed in the city and that they operated in support of the police and Civil Guard rather than in their place. She referred repeatedly to hybrid warfare without naming any country, and said the duty of secrecy covering the CNI’s work operates as an obstacle to describing it publicly.
Ester Muñoz, spokeswoman for the People’s Party (PP) in the Congress, asked during the session “who is lying”: the CNI, CIFAS, the National Police or Marlaska. PP sources said the party was weighing a request for the two ministers to be questioned together.
PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo on August 26 renewed a demand first made on August 5 that the Congress convene its official secrets committee, the body cleared to examine classified material and the CNI’s reserved funds. “Someone is lying,” he said.
Alberto Asarta, Vox spokesman on the defence committee, said his party had evidence the intelligence services did know what was coming and called for a permanent reinforcement of the armed forces at the frontier.
The Spanish cabinet on August 25 declared Ceuta a matter of interest for national security until December 31, established a single command under Territorial Policy Minister Ángel Víctor Torres and approved €25 million for the care of migrant minors in the city.
It also approved draft bills on asylum and immigration to bring Spanish law into line with the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum, which has applied since June 12. Spain had not completed that adaptation before the pact took effect, despite submitting an implementation plan to Brussels in December 2024.
Markus Lammert, the European Commission’s home affairs spokesman, welcomed the single command and the cooperation with Morocco the same day, though “significant challenges” remained, in particular the several thousand people still in Ceuta.
The priority was the rapid return of anyone staying irregularly, he said, repeating an offer of reinforcements from Frontex, Europol and the European Union Agency for Asylum. Madrid has asked the Commission for emergency funding.
The Congress was due to vote on August 26 on whether to require Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to appear over the crisis. Neither ministry has said what the CNI transmitted before July 30, through which channel or to which authority.
