What really happened in Ceuta? Why we may never find out

A heavy police and army deployment prepare at the border between Morocco and Spain on August 15, 2026 in Fnideq (Castillejos), Morocco. Adri Salido/Getty Images Europe hide caption

SEVILLE, Spain — When Juanjo Coronado wrote back to NPR, two weeks after the July 30 mass border crossing in Ceuta, to send an update on how he and his daughter were doing, he sent just one line: "same, which means worse."

Weeks after the mass crossing, in which more than 140 people died, Spain is trying to close the chapter. The government says that most of the over 70,000 migrants who crossed into Ceuta the week of July 27 are back in Morocco, and that they returned of their own accord.

Thousands of migrants, many of them unattended minors, remain in Ceuta, while the local population adapts to their presence: from helping with food or shelter, to organizing neighborhood watch groups with aggressive tactics. Or in the case of Juanjo Coronado, simply not going outside.

The images of tens of thousands of migrants crossing into the small Spanish enclave came as a shock to Spanish leaders, who had been busy responding to some of the largest wildfires in Spain's history. The event was also a shock, and a cause of division, in the European Union.

Many world leaders, such as President Donald Trump and Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni, quickly pointed at the event as the exemplification of the global anti-immigration movement's worst nightmare.

But it was not a shock to Teresa Pardo and Juanjo Coronado, who have lived in Ceuta their entire lives, a territory of roughly 7 square miles, much of it surrounded by a fence.

And not just any fence. It's a 5-mile long double fence, as tall as 30-feet, equipped with the latest technology designed to stop sudden crossing attempts by migrants from the other side of the border.