Chronology of crises and current situation

The operational history of the Ceuta and Melilla fences is not explained by their successive expansions, but by four crises that have redefined the Spanish border control model: the emergence of the mass assault in 2005, the Tarajal Tragedy in 2014, the Barrio Chino massacre in Melilla in 2022, and the Ceuta crisis of July-August 2026, still in development as of the cut-off date. Between the second and third milestones lies a decade of periodic jumps —with peaks in 2016-2018— which acted as a laboratory for methods and responses. The pattern is consistent: each physical hardening has shifted the flow towards more lethal vectors (the sea) or towards more vulnerable points (border crossings), and each crisis has left a death toll never officially closed, a judicial procedure filed, and a device reform that has not prevented the next crisis.

3.1 The birth of the mass assault (2005)

Until the summer of 2005, pressure on the fences occurred in individual attempts or by small groups. On August 28, 2005, in Melilla, some 300 sub-Saharan individuals coordinately attacked the double fence with a hundred homemade ladders, injuring about ten Civil Guards; three assailants later died from their injuries (El País; ABC, August-September 2005). The method —a synchronized avalanche with ladders to saturate the response at several simultaneous points— inaugurated the mass assault as a dominant technique and demonstrated that the three-meter fence, designed as visual deterrence, could not withstand an organized collective escalation.

The sequence worsened in the following weeks. On September 29, between 500 and 700 people tried to enter Ceuta; five died, several from bullet impacts whose authorship was investigated without conclusive results, more than a hundred were injured, and 214 managed to enter (El País, September 2005; CESTIM thesis). On October 6, in Melilla, about 400 people staged a new assault in which six died, from Moroccan forces' gunfire and from crushing (El País; ABC, October 2005). The balance for the August-October 2005 cycle is estimated at 14-15 dead: the range reflects the absence of a consolidated official count, as some of the deceased were on Moroccan territory or days later in hospitals (CESTIM thesis; El País).

The institutional response was threefold. Militarily, the Government deployed the Army in support of the Civil Guard and agreed with Rabat on the mutual reinforcement of contingents on both sides, a precedent for subsequent Hispano-Moroccan operational co-responsibility. Physically, the Rodríguez Zapatero Government raised the double fence from three to six meters (triple in Melilla) and installed concertina wire, pepper sprayers, and, in 2006, Melilla's three-dimensional cable; this 2005-2006 reinforcement is detailed in chapter 2 (section 2.2.2). Humanitarily, Doctors Without Borders documented the abandonment of hundreds of immigrants in desert areas of southern Morocco, detained next to the fences and forcibly transferred without water or assistance (MSF, October 2005): the first public evidence of the externalized cost of control, with Morocco already acting as a subcontracted gendarme using methods inapplicable in Spanish territory.

3.2 The Tarajal Tragedy (February 6, 2014)

In the early hours of February 6, 2014, a group estimated at between 200 and 400 people attempted to enter Ceuta via the Tarajal breakwater, the maritime end of the fence where the terrestrial perimeter extends into the sea. Around ninety chose to bypass the breakwater by swimming while the rest forced the terrestrial area. The Civil Guard used anti-riot material, including rubber bullets and smoke canisters, a fact that the Ministry of the Interior acknowledged after days of contradictory denials (Ministry of the Interior, February 2014). At least fourteen people drowned —some sources raise the toll to fifteen, without official confirmation—, and their bodies were recovered in waters and on beaches on both sides of the breakwater (CEAR; La Vanguardia, February 2014). Another 23 people who had stepped on Spanish soil were immediately returned to Morocco: handed directly to Moroccan forces without identification or the possibility of requesting asylum.

The case condenses the three fault lines that will reappear in 2022 and 2026: the lethality of the sea as a route to circumvent the fence, the use of anti-riot means against people in the water, and hot returns as an administrative response. Regarding the first point, Tarajal showed that the breakwater could be circumvented by swimming a few hundred meters in choppy waters, making each attempt a deadly risk operation even without police intervention. Regarding the second, the judicial investigation never established a direct causal relationship between the firing of rubber bullets and the drownings, but the Ombudsman and human rights organizations maintained that launching projectiles and smoke at people swimming at night objectively increased the risk of panic and drowning (Ombudsman, 2014). The Ministry of the Interior maintained that the action was proportionate and that the deceased were not hit (Ministry of the Interior, 2014).

On the political level, the tragedy led to the parliamentary appearance of the Minister of the Interior, Jorge Fernández Díaz, a credibility crisis due to the successive versions about the rubber bullets, and the dismissal of the Chief Colonel of the Ceuta Command. Judicially, the criminal proceedings against sixteen agents for reckless homicide were definitively dismissed, as no causality was deemed proven between the police action and the deaths (Provincial Court of Cadiz, 2020). The 23 hot returns were at the origin of the legal battle over border rejections that would culminate in the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights in the case N.D. and N.T. against Spain —events of August 2014 in Melilla— and in the internal doctrine of the Supreme Court on the return of minors, with a criminal conviction of the former Government delegate in Ceuta in 2025 (ECtHR, Grand Chamber, 13/02/2020; Provincial Court of Cadiz, September 2025; see chapter 5). Tarajal did not result in a single conviction for the fourteen deaths, but it did establish the jurisprudential line that twelve years later would declare border rejection inapplicable to those entering by swimming: the legal trigger for the 2026 crisis.

3.3 The fence breaches of the 2010s

Between the 2005 crisis and the new anti-climbing fence of 2019-2022, mass assaults occurred with irregular periodicity but a stable method: prior concentration on the mountain, selection of dates of maximum symbolism or minimum staffing (New Year's Eve, festivities) and synchronized escalation with makeshift ladders at various points to saturate the response. Ceuta concentrated almost all the major breaches of the period; Melilla, with its three-dimensional barbed wire operational since 2006, registered minor attempts. The table shows the main verified episodes with coinciding sources.

An analytical reading of the series shows that the defensive effectiveness of the six-meter fence with concertina wire was partial: breaches continued to produce massive entries into Ceuta until 2018, with peaks of several hundred people per episode, and instrumental violence increased —wire cutters, quicklime, acid, and Molotov cocktails in July 2018—, raising the risk for both agents and those attempting to cross. The subsequent hardening of the perimeter, with the anti-climbing barrier of 2019-2022, closes this cycle and opens the next, already described in chapter 4: the displacement of the flow towards the sea.

Five years after the replacement of the concertina wire with the new ten-meter barrier, the Ceuta and Melilla fence fulfills its function of physical deterrence against mass assault, but it has ceased to be the point through which migratory pressure on Spain materializes. The technical-operational balance as of August 2026 is that of a costly infrastructure, partially effective within its own perimeter, and structurally vulnerable on its flanks: the sea, the subsoil, and the human factor.

4.1 Real effectiveness of the hardening and displacement of the flow to the sea

The last major successful mass crossing occurred on March 2, 2022, in Melilla, when approximately 2,500 people attempted to force the perimeter and around 500 succeeded, using grappling hooks and screws embedded in shoe soles (Ministry of Interior and local media, March 2022). Three months later, the tragedy of June 24, 2022, at the Barrio Chino crossing —discussed in the previous chapter— marked a turning point: since then, mass assaults on the fence have become residual. The immediate cause is not only the reinforcement of the infrastructure, but the strict control exerted by Moroccan forces in the vicinity of the perimeter since the new Hispanic-Moroccan understanding agreement of April 2022 (La Vanguardia, 2/01/2026). The effectiveness of the fence, therefore, is largely outsourced: it depends on the subcontracted gendarme on the other side, not solely on its own steel.

The flow has not disappeared; it has shifted to the water. Since 2023-2024, the dominant method of irregular entry into Ceuta is swimming: young people —with an increasing presence of women and minors, mostly Moroccan and Algerian, although with a growing proportion of sub-Saharan Africans— swim around the breakwaters of Tarajal and Benzú, the two ends where the fence meets the sea, taking advantage of fog, strong winds, or night (police sources cited by local press, 2025). The deadly toll of this route is increasing: in 2025, some 46 people died attempting to reach Ceuta by swimming, according to police sources who speak of «more than 40» (EFE, 2025), and by August 1, 2026, the count of deceased swimmers had already reached 99, inflated by the July crisis (EFE, 1/08/2026). Arrival by small boat, however, is marginal in the two cities: Ceuta registered five maritime arrivals in 2025, a historical low, and Melilla twenty-five (Ministry of Interior, 2025). Minor but significant routes also persist: concealment in vehicles with false bottoms at the Tarajal and Beni-Enzar crossings, the use of false documentation during occasional collapses at the Ceuta crossing, and underground tunnels.

The operational paradox is that the displacement to the sea has rendered the main legal instrument of containment useless. Supreme Court ruling 814/2026, communicated on July 8, 2026, confirmed that the tenth additional provision of the Immigration Law does not protect the «border rejection» of someone intercepted in the water, because «whoever enters by swimming does not overcome a border containment element» (CGPJ, 8/07/2026). Its legal development corresponds to chapter 5; suffice it to say here that the reinforcement of the fence pushed the flow precisely towards the scenario —the sea— where the legal mechanism for immediate return has been excluded.

The new fence, executed by TRAGSA with a budget of approximately 18 million euros, removed the concertinas —high-impact spiral blades— and raised the barrier to ten meters in sensitive sections, incorporating an «anti-climb» cylinder or roller at the top, an inverted comb, and anti-cut mesh (Ministry of Interior, 2022). On paper, the ensemble is the most sophisticated land border barrier in the European Union. On the ground, journalistic and police documentation reveals significant deficiencies: «the combs serve no purpose, the tubes were only installed in some areas, the locks have failures», and the perimeter sensors —obsolete— show a delay of about 40 seconds between detection and alert (El Faro de Ceuta, 25/02/2024). In a scenario where an assault is timed in minutes, 40 seconds of latency turn early detection into late detection: the reaction time of the device falls below the intruder's crossing time.

The accumulated expenditure on successive generations of fences in Ceuta and Melilla exceeds 100 million euros since the 1990s (estimate based on public contracts, 2024). Each generation of reinforcement has resolved the crossing method prevalent at the time of its design —homemade ladders, scalable concertinas, mass jumps— and has simultaneously created an incentive for the next method. The assault on the fence gave way to swimming; swimming coexists with tunnels. The pattern is that of an adaptive race in which defensive investment is structurally reactive. Added to this is a political limit: the actual porosity of the perimeter ultimately depends on Morocco's willingness to guard its side, as demonstrated by the initial passivity of the forces of the neighboring country during the July 2026 crisis and, conversely, the «exemplary» containment that the Ministry of Interior attributes to Rabat in periods of understanding (Interior communiqués, July 2026).

4.2 Official figures 2022-2026 and national trend

Official figures for irregular entries allow for precise measurement of the flow's displacement. The table shows arrivals by land to Ceuta and Melilla and the national trend, according to Ministry of Interior balances (data as of July 15, 2026 for the last year; 2023 figures approximated by rounding in official sources).

The reading of the series is clear. While the national total falls by 42.6% in 2025 —driven by the collapse of the Canary Islands route, which loses 62% of arrivals to settle at 17,788 people—, the land border of Ceuta and Melilla grows by 45.4% in the same year, and Ceuta has three consecutive years of increases: from 1,068 entries in 2023 to 3,523 in 2025, more than triple. The first half of 2026 accentuates the divergence: with the national count 24.7% below and the Canary Islands 61.2% down, land entries triple (+140%) and Ceuta registers a +149% year-on-year. The outlier is Melilla, which after falling to 116 entries in 2024, rebounds by 181.9% in 2025, although from a very low base: its migratory pressure remains an order of magnitude lower than Ceuta's.

The strategic implication is that migratory pressure on Spain has not decreased: it has changed its route. The emptying of the Canary Islands corridor —attributable to strengthened Atlantic surveillance and cooperation with Mauritania, Senegal, and Morocco— has reactivated the land border and, in parallel, the Algerian route to the Peninsula and Balearic Islands, which grew by 24.5% in 2025 (Ministry of Interior, 2025). The border of Ceuta and Melilla thus becomes the leading indicator of pressure on the entire system: what the external apparatus gains in the Atlantic, it loses in the Strait.

4.3 New technologies and the Tarajal drug tunnel

The Ministry of Interior's response to the flow's displacement has been a new technological layer over the physical infrastructure. Since February 2024, artificial intelligence systems associated with radars with a range of 450 meters and integrated turrets with drones are being tested in Ceuta, at an approximate cost of seven million euros (Interior tenders, 2024). In October 2025, Interior activated an emergency contract for 4.9 million euros for smart sensors on the perimeter, and in November 2025, the European Entry/Exit System (EES) came into service. The accumulated expenditure on border control technology between 2018 and 2025 amounts to approximately 541 million euros. The discovery of the Tarajal drug tunnel confirmed, in parallel, that the subsoil is the third flank of the perimeter, alongside the sea and the human factor.