This attempt at massive entry is the first since the normalization of relations between Madrid and Rabat, in March.
Le Monde with AFP
More than 400 migrants have tried to enter the Spanish enclave of Melilla from Morocco, Friday June 24 in the morning, and “a significant number” of them arrived there, said the prefecture at the AFP, without specifying their number. This attempt at massive entry into one of the two Spanish enclaves located on the north coast of Morocco is the first since the normalization of relations between Madrid and Rabat, which occurred in mid-March after almost a year of diplomatic quarrel.
The Spanish police have spotted “around 6:40 a.m. a group of migrants formed by more than 400 people” approaching the border, said a spokesperson for the prefecture. “Despite the large safety device for Moroccan forces, which actively collaborated and coordinated with the police [Spanish], a large group of people from sub -Saharan African countries, perfectly organized and violent, forced The entrance and broke the border control door “before entering Melilla, he said.
Madrid and Rabat sealed recently their reconciliation after Madrid’s decision, in March, to publicly support the Moroccan autonomy plan for Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony controlled at 80 % by Morocco but claimed by The Sahrawi independence from the Polisario Front, supported by Algeria. This decision had made it possible to put an end to a diplomatic crisis caused by the reception in Spain of the Polisario chief, Brahim Ghali, to be treated there from COVID-19, in April 2021.
This crisis had been marked by the entry in May 2021 of more than 10,000 migrants in twenty-four hours in the Enclave de Ceuta, thanks to a relaxation of border controls on the Moroccan side. Just before the reconciliation between the two countries, Melilla had been the theater, in early March, of several attempts at massive entry, the most important of which ever recorded in this enclave with some 2,500 migrants. Nearly 500 had succeeded.
The standardization of relations between Rabat and Madrid allowed the reopening in May of the border posts between northern Morocco and Ceuta and Melilla. These two enclaves constitute the only land borders of the European Union on the African continent and are regularly the subject of entry attempts from migrants seeking to join Europe.