At least one Moroccan frigate and several patrol boats entered waters off Ceuta without permission. The incursions coincided with a mass arrival of migrants and a near collision at sea.
El Tarajal was overwhelmed for hours on 30 July as thousands of migrants crossed into Ceuta. Off the coast, a Spanish patrol boat and a Moroccan vessel came close to colliding.
Spain’s Defence Ministry recorded at least one Moroccan frigate and several patrol boats in Spanish waters on 30 and 31 July, without permission. Reuters reported that Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez confirmed the entries and said a Spanish frigate had to push the Moroccan vessels out of the disputed area.
Sources familiar with the incidents told El País that the entries were repeated and deliberate, not accidental passages. Sánchez confirmed the encounters during an informal conversation with journalists but did not explain why the vessels entered. He called the days exceptionally difficult and said senior-level contact had taken place between the two countries’ armed forces.
The maritime boundary is disputed: Spain regards the waters around Ceuta within 12 nautical miles as territorial, while Morocco does not recognise Spanish sovereignty over Ceuta or its adjacent waters.
Yabiladi also reports that Morocco does not recognize Spanish sovereignty over Melilla.
The timing is clear; any link between the naval movements and the migrant influx is not. The arrivals through El Tarajal overwhelmed Ceuta’s operational capacity for hours. The article reports 70,000 arrivals. Reuters cited an estimate of more than 72,000 border crossings in late July, but the available material does not establish 70,000 or 80,000 as official figures for this episode.
Madrid mayor José Luis Martínez-Almeida later referred to 80,000 people and questioned whether Moroccan authorities could have been unaware of or uninvolved in their passage. That was his claim, not a government finding.
Whether the vessel movements were coordinated with the migrant influx remains unanswered. Spain’s Defence Ministry declined to comment on that question. A police report sent to the Audiencia Nacional in September said Moroccan agents planned and guided the entry. The Interior Ministry, led by Fernando Grande Marlaska, says there is still no evidence establishing Rabat’s authorship.
El Nacional reported an earlier statement from Sánchez that Spain’s intelligence services had no information confirming Moroccan authorities’ involvement in the mass crossings. That claim concerns the migration influx, not the separately confirmed naval entries.
Ceuta’s president, Juan Jesús Vivas, said he had asked the central government for help days before the arrivals and argued that preventive measures were not taken. A separate Ceuta report described the later clearance of El Guano, the enclave’s last major migrant camp.
Spanish media reports said the incursions continued into the first days of August. Spain then stepped up its naval presence and held high-level contacts with Rabat. ElPlural and Teleceuta reported that the Moroccan vessels stopped entering after those steps.
According to El Nacional, Spain first sent the maritime action vessel BAM Rayo, which arrived off Ceuta on 3 August. Frigates Santa María and Navarra were then assigned to observation and deterrence, extending the response beyond routine border patrols.
Morocco’s Ksar Sghir naval base lies near Tangier, at the Strait of Gibraltar’s narrowest point. Designed to accommodate Sigma- and Fremm-class frigates, the base sits close to the key maritime passage. Reports have also said Rabat was in talks with the Trump administration about hosting US ships there, potentially as an alternative to Rota. Those reports describe discussions, not a completed arrangement.
