Ceuta is facing a deepening crisis as the number of unaccompanied migrant minors on its streets continues to climb. Following the mass arrivals on 30 and 31 July 2026, the Spanish government said around 2,500 minors remained in the city, while local NGOs and neighborhood associations put the figure as high as 4,000. The competing estimates have intensified scrutiny of the authorities’ response and drawn attention to the scale of the humanitarian challenge.
Save the Children estimates that only about 1,500 children and adolescents are currently within the official protection system. The rest, many of whom crossed the border by swimming, are left to fend for themselves in precarious conditions. Some have found temporary shelter with help from local residents, including at an outdoor futsal field in La Reina. Most are scattered across the city: on the streets of El Príncipe and at El Trampolín beach, as well as in the hills and semi-abandoned warehouses of El Tarajal. These makeshift refuges are overcrowded and lack basic hygiene. Many minors have untreated wounds and infections, including scabies.
Food distribution is limited: NGOs such as Luna Blanca can provide only one meal per day. Conditions in El Tarajal are particularly dire. Save the Children’s program director has warned that girls left alone are especially vulnerable to abuse and exploitation, amid concerns over the lack of nighttime protection in these areas. On Wednesday, two minors collapsed in the heat, one from dehydration and hunger, the other from untreated illness. Others pleaded for medical help.
Every morning, hundreds of minors gather outside Ceuta’s police headquarters from as early as five o’clock, hoping to register and enter the protection system. The authorities are overwhelmed and cannot process the volume of requests, leading to long waits and growing frustration. The Minister of Territorial Policy, Ángel Víctor Torres, recently said about 1,400 young migrants had been officially registered so far. Later figures reflect a different stage in the identification and protection process: on 21 October, Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration Elma Saiz said the government had identified and was supporting 3,331 minors in Ceuta’s autonomous protection system. “The Government has identified a total of 3,331 minors,” she said after chairing a monitoring committee in the city, information from RTVE’s report of her remarks.
Those later totals do not describe the same group as estimates of children physically sleeping on the streets. A Ceuta TV report put the city government’s count at 3,390 minors, while estimates of those still on the streets stood at around 700. The report also noted that only 160 files had initially been processed. Ceuta’s ordinary capacity for unaccompanied foreign minors was reported at 29 places, far below the numbers counted after the July arrivals. The figures so track different stages, from citywide counts and identification to protection placement or a wait for processing.
The government’s current plan prioritizes family reunification, aiming to return minors to their families in Morocco where possible. Save the Children stresses that each case must be assessed individually to ensure legal safeguards and the child’s consent. On 21 October, Saiz said 107 minors had been transferred to mainland Spain through family reunification, while 181 had been relocated to other autonomous communities under Article 35 of Spain’s Immigration Law. A subsequent government update put the protection-system total at 3,434 and said 114 minors were hosted by families in mainland Spain, alongside the same 181 transfers under Article 35. It also said 65 family-reunification files had been sent to Morocco and remained unresolved. The Spanish Foreign Minister has taken a firmer stance, insisting that all irregular entrants will be returned to Morocco, in line with Rabat’s stated position. The legal and humanitarian complexities of such returns remain unresolved.
The government has reported returns of 12,705 migrants from Ceuta to Morocco since 10 August, a figure separate from the child-protection process. Minors’ cases instead involved protection registration, with family-reunification assessments determining possible transfers to other regions. The figures and procedures show that the response combined returns of migrants with a separate system for children, rather than counting minors as part of the ordinary return total.
This Thursday, the Ministry of Youth and Children will meet with Spain’s autonomous communities to discuss allocating an extraordinary €25 million credit for Ceuta. The meeting is a technical step ahead of the Sectoral Conference on Children and Adolescents, expected to convene at the end of August. Some regional governments, including those where Vox controls child welfare, have already announced they will not participate. Madrid has confirmed its attendance but distanced itself from the national migration policy.
Torres has defended the government’s response, arguing that minors must be distributed among Spain’s autonomous communities. He cited the transfer of 4,000 minors to other communities over the preceding two years and described the July influx into Ceuta as “absolutely unforeseeable.” The dispute is part of a wider national debate over how regions should share responsibility for unaccompanied minors. Recent disputes between Spanish police and Moroccan authorities over the treatment of migrants have further complicated the situation, as highlighted in a recent report on police responses to abuse allegations.
Ceuta’s position as a Spanish enclave bordering Morocco has long made it a focal point for migration flows. The city’s limited resources and infrastructure are now under unprecedented strain. Spain’s child protection system is designed to provide shelter and healthcare, along with legal support, to unaccompanied minors, but the current influx has overwhelmed available capacity. The €25 million emergency fund is intended to bolster local services, and effective coordination between national and regional authorities remains critical. The outcome of the upcoming Sectoral Conference may set a precedent for how Spain manages similar crises, especially as migration pressures across southern Europe continue to rise.
