Pedro Sánchez did not need much time to respond to Santiago Abascal. The Vox leader’s question about whether the Spanish government was being subjected to “blackmail” by Morocco, because Rabat allegedly possessed information about the prime minister, turned into a direct political confrontation in Parliament. Sánchez did not merely defend himself; he turned the attack back on his opponent.
The Spanish prime minister categorically denied having been subjected to any form of blackmail by Morocco, arguing that the accusation was not supported by evidence. He then addressed Abascal in much harsher terms, essentially telling him that it was the Vox leader himself who placed himself within the orbit of the United States and Israel, suggesting that the Vox leader might be willing to become subordinate to any power.
In that exchange, Morocco moved away from the position of the accused that Abascal was trying to impose on it and became an element in a broader Spanish political confrontation over Madrid’s relations with Rabat and with international powers.
But the significance of the confrontation does not lie only in the words “blackmail” and “subordination.” In recent days, Sánchez had already taken a more specific position on the Ceuta crisis: according to his statements, Spain’s security services, the National Intelligence Centre and other intelligence agencies had found no information establishing that Moroccan authorities had participated “in any way” in the mass arrivals that affected the city.
That statement was not incidental. The accusation that Morocco used migration to pressure Spain is not new in Spanish political debate, particularly whenever tensions rise around Ceuta and Melilla. The difficulty this time is that the government itself says it has found no intelligence evidence supporting that account.
More importantly, Sánchez did not use the absence of such evidence to diminish Morocco’s importance. He did the opposite. He stressed that cooperation with Rabat, particularly on migration, remains essential, warning that without it the situation would become even more difficult to manage.
In politics, there is an important difference between saying that Morocco is a necessary strategic partner for Spain and saying that Morocco had nothing to do with what happened in Ceuta. The first is a strategic position; the second is a judgment about a specific event. In Sánchez’s statements, the Spanish government has sought to keep the two questions separate.
Then another explanation for what happened emerged.
Sánchez pointed to misleading information circulating on social media. He said there were indications that Russia and Israel had been involved in spreading or amplifying narratives related to Spain’s migration policy, contributing, according to the government’s account, to the impression among thousands of people that reaching Ceuta would allow them to remain in Spain.
The Spanish government later went beyond simply referring to “rumours” circulating online. It said it had evidence that digital forums linked to Russia and Israel had amplified what happened in Ceuta in a way that, according to Madrid, encouraged polarisation and increased divisions within the European Union.
That version, however, did not go unanswered.
Moscow called on Madrid to provide evidence for the accusations concerning a Russian role in a disinformation campaign linked to the Ceuta crisis. Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, meanwhile, rejected Sánchez’s statements about Israeli involvement, describing them as unfounded accusations and accusing the Spanish prime minister himself of spreading misinformation.
The Ceuta crisis therefore came to carry several competing narratives at once: one accusing Morocco, another pointing to digital disinformation, a third referring to Russian and Israeli-linked networks, while the parties mentioned in the accusations denied them.
Amid all this, the numbers continued to matter.
Sánchez said that around 70,000 people arrived in Ceuta on 30 and 31 July, and that roughly 90 percent of those who entered returned to Morocco in the following days. Around 5,000 people remained in the city, according to figures given by the Spanish prime minister, while voluntary returns continued afterwards.
Those figures make it difficult to treat what happened as merely a routine border incident. But the numbers themselves do not establish where the information that prompted so many people to move originated, nor do they prove that a particular actor organised or facilitated the movement.
That is precisely where the Spanish government’s position becomes more significant than a simple political denial of Moroccan involvement.
Spain’s Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares described disinformation as the “direct trigger” of the wave, while acknowledging the exceptional complexity of the border between Ceuta and Morocco. Sánchez, for his part, spoke of indications of external involvement in amplifying the information, before his government faced demands for evidence and denials from Russia and Israel.
Abascal chose a completely different interpretation: Morocco was putting pressure on Spain and, in his account, the Spanish government had gone so far in its relationship with Rabat that Spain appeared to have become a “Moroccan protectorate.”
That rhetoric clearly serves Vox’s position within Spanish politics, where migration, sovereignty over Ceuta and Melilla and relations with Morocco are recurring elements of the party’s political discourse. But turning that rhetoric into an established fact requires something the parliamentary confrontation did not provide: evidence that Morocco actually used the migration wave to pressure Madrid, or that the Spanish government was being blackmailed on the basis of confidential information.
Sánchez did not provide such evidence because he did not accuse Morocco himself. The substance of his response was precisely that the accusation was unsupported.
The Ceuta crisis therefore remains in a more complicated space than the binary interpretation some Spanish political discourse attempts to impose: either Morocco was behind what happened, or the Spanish government is incapable of explaining it.
So far, what Madrid has announced offers another reading, but it does not close the case. Disinformation may have played a decisive role in pushing people towards the border, but it does not, by itself, explain everything that happened on the ground. Likewise, claims about platforms or forums linked to Russia or Israel require, just as the accusation against Morocco does, evidence that can be examined and verified.
The confrontation between Sánchez and Abascal has also revealed something else: Ceuta is no longer merely a border issue between Spain and Morocco. It is also an instrument of domestic political confrontation in Spain, in which migration, sovereignty and relations with Rabat are brought into the political arena, while each episode of tension is given a meaning that can go beyond what the facts themselves establish.
That is why what deserves attention now is not only what Abascal says about Morocco, nor Sánchez’s response to him, but the evidence that may establish what actually happened on 30 and 31 July: where the information originated, how it spread, who amplified it, and why it reached such a large number of people at precisely that moment.
There is a significant difference between a political accusation made in Parliament and a fact that state authorities can prove. For now, that difference is what separates the competing narratives surrounding Ceuta.
