In early August 2026 roughly 60,000 would-be migrants crossed from Morocco into Ceuta, the Spanish enclave on the northern coast of Africa, a territory of about 84,000 residents.[1][2] Moroccan security forces did not stop them; in footage of the crossing they “appear to be waving people in off of trucks,” and first-hand accounts describe border guards effectively standing down as thousands moved toward Spanish territory.[3] The framing question is therefore not how the crossing happened but who decided not to prevent it: “This is not something that happens on its own.”[3][4]
The disinformation that drew the crowd
A large volume of false information circulated on social media beforehand, principally the claim that anyone reaching Ceuta would be allowed to stay, granted Spanish citizenship and left free to travel anywhere in Europe.[5] The claim spread on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and migrants interviewed at the scene repeated it in the words “Spain has opened the door.”[5][6] By the following morning the Spanish government reported that most of those who entered had been expelled, returned to Morocco or left voluntarily, although video continued to circulate suggesting some remained.[7][8]
The motive
Early attention fell on Israel, on the reasoning that Spain has been the most vocal critic of Israel in Western Europe alongside Ireland, and that Israel’s good relations with Morocco gave it the access to arrange such a thing.[9][10] Kiriakou does not accept it: “I’m not sure that that’s true. I think that the Israelis, you know, probably got a kick out of this, but I think this was specific to Morocco. I think the Moroccans did this on their own for a completely different reason.”[10]
That reason is Algeria. Morocco and Algeria are long-standing rivals for primacy in North Africa, and Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez had made an official visit to Algeria on 20 July; the Moroccan king was, in Kiriakou’s account, angry enough to “throw a wrench into the works.”[11][12] He notes that Morocco had done the same thing to Spain once before, in 2021, and treats the willingness to risk Moroccan lives in the water as the striking part: Morocco “potentially let dozens of its citizens die swimming into Ceuta purely to show that it can just mess with Spain whenever it wants to. That’s an insane weapon to use against another country.”[13][14]
Fallout in Spain
The crossings landed on a Spanish government already exposed, having announced a month earlier that it would legalise 120,000 previously undocumented migrants, almost all from North Africa.[15] Kiriakou’s objection is practical rather than moral — “it’s a noble idea to want to help the poor, the downtrodden” and he comes from an immigrant family himself, but a state cannot open its borders and still supply housing, food, water, jobs, medical care and education to everyone who arrives.[16] His political verdict on Sánchez, whose government insists its policies did not cause the surge: “I think politically he’s done.”[8] Europe’s right-wing parties responded immediately, with Nigel Farage warning that those entering Ceuta would work their way to the French coast and then across the English Channel — a prospect Kiriakou calls “entirely possible” — and the deputy leader of the French National Front saying Sánchez had “opened the doors of Europe to all dangers.”[17]
What the analysts knew
Asked whether the CIA saw it coming, Kiriakou is unequivocal and unbothered: the agency keeps an army of analysts watching exactly this kind of question, so “of course they did. They didn’t act.”[18] He adds that he would not have expected them to act, because the crossing does not touch American interests, and if the consequence is embarrassment for Spain then from the point of view of Donald Trump, “who cares?”[18] The useful question for an analyst, he argues, is the one that points home: “Could this happen here? That’s really what you want your analysts to think about.”[19]