How a social media campaign triggered huge migrant surge on Ceuta

A few days after Spain’s Supreme Court ruled that migrants who swim into the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla on the coast of northern Africa cannot be summarily returned to Morocco, nearly 60,000 people converged on Ceuta on Friday last week, hoping to make their way to Europe.

On July 29, the Spanish court ruled that, as people swimming to Ceuta do not cross the physical border fence, they must be processed according to more stringent legal procedures before they can be deported back to Morocco.

Within days, the ruling had been recast online as an open invitation. New accounts and pages claimed Spain had “opened the way” for anyone arriving by sea and that returns were no longer possible. Smuggling networks across Morocco, Africa and Algeria joined the campaign through three main channels.

Personal accounts set up in early June posted daily calls to people to cross into Ceuta by sea, directing followers to WhatsApp groups arranging collective travel and reporting on conditions for young people in Ceuta.

A page called “Hagra sueta 26”, with about 38,000 followers on Facebook and 80,000 on Instagram, showcased photographs and videos of successful swimmers.

Local Facebook groups, notably “haraga maroc”, which has 12,000 members and the phrase “migration to Spain” in its description, urged people to gather and head for Ceuta, and shared practical information about routes there.

Social media content seen by Al Jazeera revealed a promise of “the dream”: Work or marriage in Spain or elsewhere in Europe. A number of accounts called on followers to travel in groups, some named assembly and departure points inside Morocco, and others posted success stories while urging anyone wanting a safe crossing to Ceuta to make contact directly.

For the most part, the channels do not appear to have specific, organised links to each other. Combined, however, they snowballed into a movement of people.

A flurry of activity followed. Vendors advertised swimming and diving gear as well as inflatable boats, while users posted guidance on the best launch points along the Moroccan coast, citing their reading of the ruling.

Then, groups of young people began appearing at Ceuta’s gates. Platforms amplified news of the gatherings, numbers grew, and the effort peaked in a mass border crossing on July 28 and in the days that followed.

Citing an intelligence report, Spanish newspaper La Razon reported that social media accounts and groups in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, France and the United States had circulated “mobilisation messages”, information about logistics and routes to Ceuta, and advice on getting past the maritime barrier at Tarajal.

The campaign was not centralised, the report said, but grew with different groups and people taking on roles split between producing, amplifying, resharing and coordinating content. Compared with previous attempts to use social media as a tool for mobilising irregular migration and mass border crossings, it noted closer integration across platforms, heavier use of video and faster circulation of practical information.

One image dominated the wave: Farah, a young Moroccan woman from Larache, a city on the Atlantic coast in the north of the country, who swam more than 5km (3 miles) from Fnideq to Ribera Beach in Ceuta. Images from crossings near Ceuta usually show exhausted men in wet clothes, struggling ashore or being intercepted. Farah was photographed in a swimsuit, smiling and raising a victory sign, and the picture spread widely.

Fabricated and artificial intelligence-generated material also spread. The most prominent was a video of a Moroccan man swimming with unusual skill, which was presented as him crossing to Ceuta. It drew calls for him to be admitted to Spain, and even added to the national Olympic team. The clip was later shown to have been filmed in El Jadida, in western Morocco, where he had been documenting a local swim. He posted videos denying any attempt to migrate, saying the footage had been stripped of its context.

Photographs of missing young men then circulated on Facebook in Fnideq and on other local Moroccan platforms. The posts said they had set out for Ceuta and had not been seen for days, alarming families and prompting appeals for searches.

Spanish authorities said at least 67 bodies were recovered after many migrants drowned.

A migrant waits on the beach following mass crossings of migrants on foot and by sea from Morocco into Spanish territory in Ceuta, Spain, on August 3, 2026 [Violeta Santos Moura/Reuters]

A crisis put to political use

Moroccan rights groups condemned what they called the mass flight of young people towards Ceuta, holding the government responsible.

A far-right network on X, meanwhile, used footage of trucks carrying young people towards the Ceuta border, with security and army personnel visible nearby. The accounts presented this as proof of Moroccan “consent” and official protection for the migrants, and accused Morocco – with US backing – of looking the other way. They asserted this was retaliation for Spain’s objection to Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, which the Spanish prime minister has described as genocide, and the country’s refusal to join the US in its war on Iran, with Madrid declining to allow the US to use the jointly operated Rota and Moron bases in southern Spain for military operations against Tehran.

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, wrote on X: “Spain, which never misses an opportunity to lecture Israel, has declared a state of emergency in Ceuta because of the crisis of its migration policy. Perhaps before it continues to lecture us, it is time for it to explain to the world why it still holds colonial enclaves in Africa.”

The episode came against the backdrop of long-running tensions between Morocco and Spain over Ceuta and Melilla.