On Thursday evening, the messages started coming in. “Have you heard about Ceuta?” If you live here and have family in Spain, you’ll know the conversation. 60,000 people crossed from Morocco into Ceuta in less than 24 hours between 30 and 31 July. 57 people died at sea. The Spanish army was deployed. And on Friday, Italy closed its air and sea borders with Spain for a month, with Giorgia Meloni describing it as an “extraordinary measure to safeguard national security”. Denmark and Finland also called for Spain to be suspended from the Schengen Area. France stepped up land border controls.
As Switzerland is also part of the Schengen Area, the question that has come up several times this week is the same: does this affect us? The straightforward answer is: no. The Italian measure only affects third-country nationals travelling between Italy and Spain. Europeans, including Spaniards, can continue to travel as normal. And there is an important technical detail that is not widely discussed online: Ceuta and Melilla are not part of the Schengen area. They have special status. The European Commission itself pointed this out this week: arrivals in Ceuta do not imply free access to the mainland, because entry controls to the peninsula are already in place. Talking about expelling Spain from the Schengen Area because of what is happening in Ceuta is, technically speaking, an argument that does not hold water.
Pedro Sánchez responded with figures from Frontex: between 2021 and 2026, Italy recorded 478,600 irregular entries, double the number in Spain (234,760). Migration experts described it outright as a “political stunt” against the Spanish government. It may well be. But there are also 57 real people who have died at sea and a town of 85,000 inhabitants that has been completely overwhelmed for days. Both things can be true at the same time – something that is not all that common in this sort of debate.