Risks, 2026-2030 scenarios and conclusions

The preceding chapters describe a border device that is technically shielded but politically outsourced, subject to its own hardening jurisprudence (Supreme Court rulings —STS— 114/2024 and 814/2026) and a neighbor who holds the migratory tap, informational advantage (Pegasus), and the backing of the decisive ally in Washington. This chapter translates that diagnosis into the instruments the decision-maker needs: a risk matrix with early warning indicators, three scenarios for the 2026-2030 horizon, and differentiated recommendations for the intelligence and political spheres. Probabilities are expressed in qualitative ranges —low (below 20%), medium-low (20-40%), medium (40-60%), medium-high (60-80%), and high (above 80%)—, avoiding the false precision that the scarcity of comparable series does not allow.

8.1 Risk Matrix

8.1.1 Humanitarian and reputational risk (swimming, 99 dead 2026); legal risk (criminal liability of authorities); infiltration risk; diplomatic crisis risk; Schengen risk

The displacement of the flow from the land fence to swimming —documented in Chapter 4— has made mortality at sea the most probable risk with the highest reputational cost. The 99 swimmers dead in 2026 up to August 1 (EFE, August 2026), after about 46 in all of 2025, place the Ceuta border on a rising lethal trajectory that no announced measure —including Melilla's «buoys», spill barriers with no human containment capacity (Chapter 7)— has reversed. The legal risk is no longer theoretical: the conviction by the Provincial Court of Cádiz (September 2025) of the former Government delegate in Ceuta —nine years of disqualification for the August 2021 returns— demonstrates that the criminal liability of authorities is a realized scenario, and the Marlaska-Laftit agreement of 30/07/2026, by foreseeing returns that include minors, conflicts with the Supreme Court doctrine (STS 114/2024) and exposes to new proceedings (Chapter 5). The infiltration risk combines two confirmed factors: avalanches nullify biometric marking —including the Entry/Exit System (EES) deployed in November 2025— and open a window for the injection of clandestine assets, a pattern confirmed with agents of the General Directorate for Studies and Documentation (DGED) in May 2021; and corruption within the State Security Forces and Corps (FCSE) —two Civil Guards arrested in Operation Hades for the Tarajal drug tunnel (February 2025)— offers third-party services a vector for recruitment and kompromat (compromising material useful for coercion) without technical sophistication. The diplomatic crisis risk is structural: Morocco has twice used the relaxation of border control as pressure (2021 and 2026) and keeps the customs front open (49 imports through Ceuta in 2025; queues of up to 18 hours at Tarajal). Finally, the Schengen risk already materialized with Italy's suspension of free movement with Spain in 2026, an indicator that the fence can internally erode Spain's most valuable European asset.

The matrix reveals two patterns that the decision-maker must retain. The first is the correlation between risks: an open diplomatic crisis (stopcock) simultaneously triggers the humanitarian risk, the infiltration risk —the avalanche destroys the marking— and the Schengen risk, so that the joint probability of a systemic episode is greater than that of each component separately; the July 2026 crisis activated four of the six risks in less than ten days. The second pattern is the mismatch between probability and impact: infiltration and Schengen risks are not the most probable, but they are those with the most lasting effects, because they compromise, respectively, the internal security of the State and Spain's position in the European club. The prospective reading is that the center of gravity of the risk has shifted from the fence —today residual as an entry vector— to the sea, to the underground and to the negotiation room with Rabat.

8.2 Scenarios 2026-2030

8.2.1 Scenario A: agreed management (Marlaska-Laftit agreement + PEMA); Scenario B: instrumentalized recurrent crisis; Scenario C: sovereign escalation with U.S. backing.

Scenario A: agreed management — medium probability (30-40%). This is the continuation of the status quo following the Marlaska-Laftit agreement of 07/30/2026: Morocco keeps the stopcock closed in exchange for European funds (500 million euros, 2021-2027), measured commercial concessions and Spanish silence on sovereign pressure, while Spain internalizes the flow through the PEMA —mandatory border procedure, fiction of non-entry— applied in reinforced CETIs. In this scenario, the 2030 World Cup acts as a reputational brake and entries stabilize at manageable levels, with residual but not zero mortality. Its conditions of possibility are fragile: it requires Rabat not to find a grievance to monetize, for the Supreme Court not to invalidate agreed returns, and for the EU to renew funding after 2027 without demanding real control. Consolidation indicators: high-level meetings with substantive communiqués and dates for customs normalization; sustained decrease in Interior Ministry figures at the land border. Degradation indicators towards scenario B: recurrent queues at Tarajal, sovereign declarations by official bodies, and postponements of police cooperation.

Scenario B: instrumentalized recurrent crisis — medium probability (40-50% cumulative over the period). This is the 2021-2026 pattern turned into a cycle: every intelligence or diplomatic grievance —a new Ghali case, an unfavorable ruling for Rabat, a Spanish gesture towards Algeria— triggers a deliberate relaxation of Moroccan control, an avalanche, joint attribution to 'trafficking networks' and a quick closure through a Spanish concession. The incentive structure favors it: measured pressure has achieved results the two times it was tried (the Sahrawi shift of 2022; the flexibility of 2026) and its cost for Morocco is low as long as the EU continues to finance the pressurer. The added risk of repetition is European fatigue: each episode strengthens those who, like Italy in 2026, re-establish controls against Spain, so that the third or fourth cycle could turn the Schengen exception into the norm. Early warning indicators: highly visible espionage incidents; Supreme Court or Strasbourg rulings in imminent judgment phase; anomalous movements of Moroccan auxiliary units in the perimeter; prior social media campaigns from Moroccan accounts.

Scenario C: sovereign escalation with U.S. backing — low to medium-low probability (10-20%), very high impact. In this scenario, Morocco shifts pressure from the border to sovereignty: formal claim of Ceuta and Melilla in international forums —the 1975 attempt failed, but the context is different—, naval or fishing incidents in Ceuta waters, indefinite customs closure and an active diplomatic campaign, supported by U.S. backing for the Sahara and the Trump administration's predisposition to punish Spain. Escalation does not require military action —the Perejil (2002) lesson remains valid—: sustained hybrid coercion is enough to make the normality of the two cities untenable and force a status negotiation. The brakes are the 2030 World Cup, Moroccan dependence on European funds and the cost of breaking the fiction of 'exemplary' cooperation; but the first expires in 2030 and the other two did not prevent the 2021 and 2026 crises.

Warning indicators: initiatives to include the issue on the United Nations agenda; Moroccan parliamentary resolutions with 'recovery' language; exercises with U.S. participation in northern Morocco; Washington declarations equating Ceuta and Melilla with the Sahara. The low probability should not be reassuring: it is the only scenario that compromises territorial integrity and lacks a tested response protocol.

The three scenarios are not exclusive: A can degrade to B due to a single grievance, and repeated B normalizes the ground for C. The variable that discriminates between them is not technical —the fence will continue to delay the same amount— but political: the state of the Hispano-Moroccan relationship and the degree of European and Atlantic coverage that Spain is able to rebuild before 2030.

8.3 Recommendations

8.3.1 For intelligence: counterintelligence in flows, filtering without violating guarantees, surveillance of the underground and the sea, protection of FCSE commanders

At the intelligence level, four lines are priority. The first is counterintelligence within flows: given that avalanches cancel biometric marking, it is advisable to deploy post-analysis capability —cross-referencing EES records against CETI censuses, detecting atypical profiles, tracking individuals not located after processing— to close the window that the DGED exploited in 2021. The benefit is regaining control of who has entered when primary control fails; the cost is budgetary and legal, as it requires interoperable databases and data protection safeguards that the current framework does not clearly contemplate. The second line is filtering without violating guarantees: filtering must be based on individualized processing required by Constitutional Court ruling (STC) 172/2020 and STS 814/2026, not on material shortcuts; violating guarantees not only leads to convictions (AP Cádiz, 2025) but also renders any detection of infiltrators evidentially useless. The benefit is compatibility between security and the rule of law; the cost, procedural slowness during avalanche peaks, which must be compensated by reinforcing resources and not by exceptions. The third line is surveillance of the underground and the sea: Operation Hades demonstrated that drug trafficking digs under Spain's most controlled passage, and the 40-second delay of sensors (chapter 4) shows that the perimeter detects late; periodic georadar is required in the passages, underwater sensors at the Tarajal and Benzú breakwater, and correlation with police intelligence on networks. The benefit is closing the two vectors that the shielding does not cover; the cost is continuous investment —after the 541 million in technology from 2018-2025— whose return is difficult to politically showcase. The fourth line is the protection of FCSE commanders and personnel: counter-surveillance on those deployed, control of lifestyle, rotation of sensitive positions, and anti-recruitment protocols, assuming that corruption is the cheapest available vector for third-party services. The benefit is reducing the surface of kompromat; the cost is the internal friction that all surveillance of one's own generates.

8.3.2 For politicians: regulatory development of rejection, effective legal channels, CETI/minor allocation, firm customs negotiation, EU coordination

At the political level, the first measure is to close the normative anomaly: eleven years after the first final provision of Organic Law 4/2015, border rejection still lacks regulatory development, which leaves agents acting without the individualized procedure required by the Constitutional Court and turns each crisis into a judicial lottery for commanders. Enacting this regulation —with the limits of STC 172/2020 and the exclusion of the sea from STS 814/2026— legally shields personnel and removes from Morocco the judicial trigger it exploited in 2026; the cost is political, as it sets forth in writing guarantees that sectors of the opposition and autonomous cities will perceive as concessions, and it does not by itself resolve dependence on the Moroccan gendarme. The second measure is to make legal channels effective —accessible asylum offices, humanitarian visas, resettlement—, a condition that the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (02/13/2020) set for the legitimacy of rejection: without real legal channels, the next condemnation from Strasbourg is a matter of time, and Moroccan police filtering at the Tarajal and Beni Enzar offices (chapter 5) brings it closer. The benefit is legal and reputational; the cost, assuming a moderate increase in applications that will be presented as a pull factor. The third measure is to provide reception capacity in line with reality: a CETI with 512 places with peaks of 900 and 563 minors under guardianship with 27 ordinary places is a humanitarian and image bomb that each crisis detonates; the expansion and referral of minors to the peninsula with binding distribution among autonomous communities has a high budgetary and territorial negotiation cost, but it is the only way for reception to stop being the weak link. The fourth measure is firm customs negotiation: accepting that 49 annual imports and 18-hour queues are the price of calm consolidates strangulation as an instrument; Spain must link customs cooperation to verifiable standards with a calendar, assuming the cost of Rabat responding by tightening the migratory valve —a real cost, to be budgeted for reinforcing the apparatus— against the benefit of breaking the economic squeeze on the two cities. The fifth measure is effective European coordination: accepting the Frontex deployment offered in 2026, activating Regulation (EU) 2024/1359 on instrumentalization in the next crisis, and demanding that funding to Morocco conditions real control of the southern flank. The benefit is transforming an asymmetrical bilateral problem into a European problem; the cost, sharing the management of a border that Spain has defended as its own affair and assuming European scrutiny over returns. None of these measures alters the decisive variable —the stopcock will remain in Rabat—, but all reduce the surface on which Morocco can charge the price of opening it, the only available strategy until the structural asymmetry of chapter 7 is corrected at the diplomatic level.

The pattern of massive attempts documented in chapter 3 shows a regularity that makes the August 15 call-out more than just digital noise: the larger jumps and avalanches have not been spontaneous, but aggregated in a few hours from a signal —a date, a rumor of “open border,” an observable relaxation of Moroccan control— that acts as a coordination point (focal point) for dispersed and waiting populations. May 2021 in Ceuta and June 24, 2022 in Melilla share this mechanism: the signal does not create the accumulated pressure, it only synchronizes it. Therefore, the relevant analysis is not whether the message is «true», but how many waiting people believe it is and what the Moroccan gendarmerie will do that day.

8bis.1 Why August 15 is a plausible date

Four factors converge on the second half of August and explain the choice of date regardless of who launched it. First, the weather and maritime window: August offers the most navigable sea of the year in the Strait, a condition that has shifted the flow from fence-climbing to swimming and is behind the 99 fatalities recorded until August 1, 2026, compared to about 46 in all of 2025 (Chapter 4). Second, the institutional calendar: the second half of August is a period of minimal decision-making density in Spain —Government Delegations on duty, Parliament dissolved from ordinary activity, police reinforcements strained by the summer campaign— and maximum media exposure due to scarcity of competing agenda. Third, the political window opened by the Marlaska-Laftit agreement of July 30, 2026, which, by announcing returns —including of minors— generates an incentive for anticipation: to attempt the crossing before the deployment is consolidated. And fourth, the interpretive call effect of STS 814/2026 analyzed in Chapter 5 bis: the ruling does not open any entry route, but it circulates in transit networks as if it did, functioning as the «cannot» described in that chapter.

8bis.2 Scenarios for August 15, 2026

Probability bands follow the convention of Chapter 8: low (below 20%), medium-low (20-40%), medium (40-60%), medium-high (60-80%), and high (above 80%). They are expressed as an analytical judgment on incomplete information, not as a measurement.

8bis.3 Early warning indicators (72 hours)

The operational value of an announced call is that it allows for the monitoring of observable precursors. Five are verifiable without intrusive capabilities: the waiting population density in Fnideq, Castillejos, and the Gurugú and Bolingo mountains; the posture of the Moroccan gendarmerie at containment points —the most predictive precursor, because control on the southern side is the variable that determines the outcome (Chapter 6)—; the volume and synchronization of messages setting time and meeting point; the activity of facilitation networks in the resale of flotation material; and the tone of the bilateral diplomatic channel, whose coldness has preceded the two previous crises. The simultaneous absence of all five precursors during days 13 and 14 would degrade scenario C below the lower band.

8bis.4 Implications and recommendations

The first implication is humanitarian and brooks no delay: if the dominant scenario is the attempt by swimming (B), the decisive capacity is not more fence, but more pre-positioned rescue assets and prior coordination with Maritime Rescue and the Red Cross, because the anti-climbing perimeter described in Chapter 4 does not reduce mortality, it shifts it to the water. The second is legal: any response that reproduces summary returns, and even more so if it affects minors, collides with the doctrine established in STS 114/2024 and 814/2026 and reproduces the criminal risk already materialized in the conviction by the Provincial Court of Cádiz in September 2025 (Chapter 5). The third is counter-intelligence: any massive influx nullifies the Entry/Exit System and opens the asset injection window described in Chapter 8, requiring deferred but complete registration of affiliations and not a de facto documentary amnesty. The fourth is communication: the verifiable and early refutation of the "open border" hoax —in Arabic, French, and the languages of populations in transit— is the lowest-cost and highest-performance measure available, and its absence leaves the narrative in the hands of facilitation networks. The fifth is contractual: if the call materializes with an observable relaxation of Moroccan control, the assumption for demanding results on the 179 million euros analyzed in Chapter 5 ter is precisely activated, and this demand must be documented at the moment, not months later.

Summary: the fence is no longer the problem — the problem is the sea, the outsourcing of control, and instrumentalization; Spain needs its own doctrine for the southern border

This report has covered half a century of barriers, four crises with deaths, eleven years of regulatory vacuum, and two waves of Moroccan pressure with the same pattern. From this journey, seven conclusions are distilled.

First: the border has always been built reactively, never by strategic design. From Melilla's first barrier to the current ten-meter fence, each reinforcement responded to a previous crisis and pursued detection and retardation, not impenetrability, with an accumulated cost exceeding 100 million euros. The consequence is a technically sophisticated device but inserted into a doctrinal vacuum: no one has defined what Spain's southern border should do beyond resisting the next assault.

Second: the fence won its direct battle and lost the war of flow. Crossings are now residual, but the reinforcement shifted the pressure to sea crossings, where the human cost has soared: 99 swimmers dead in 2026 until August 1st, compared to some 46 in all of 2025 (EFE, August 2026). In parallel, the land border of Ceuta and Melilla grew by 140% in 2026 (until July 15th), while the national total fell by 24.7% in the same period, after the -42.6% of 2025 (Ministry of Interior, 2025-2026): against the national trend, the two cities have become the focal point of the problem.

Third: there is a juridical-operative paradox that exacerbates all other risks. The reinforcement of the perimeter pushed the flow to the sea just when the Supreme Court excluded the sea from the special regime of rejection (STS 814/2026), so the dominant vector of entry is also that of greatest judicial protection. Eleven years after the first final provision of Organic Law 4/2015, rejection at the border still lacks regulatory development; the conviction by the Provincial Court of Cadiz (September 2025) of the former Government delegate in Ceuta demonstrates that this vacuum comes with criminal liability for authorities, and the Moroccan police filter on the asylum offices of Tarajal and Beni Enzar undermines the condition of effective legal routes that the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (13/02/2020) established for the legitimacy of the system.

Fourth: migratory instrumentalization is a confirmed pattern, not a hypothesis. The crises of May 2021 and July 2026 share the signature: deliberate relaxation of Moroccan control, avalanche, joint attribution to 'trafficking networks' and closure through Spanish concession. The 2026 crisis, with an entry range of 40,000 to 72,000 people still being counted (Moroccan sources and Ministry of Interior, August 2026), activated four of the six matrix risks in less than ten days. Dosed pressure has worked twice, and its cost for Rabat is low as long as the European Union continues to finance the pressurer with 500 million euros (2021-2027).

Fifth: the intelligence dimension is structural and goes beyond migration. Morocco operates the second most aggressive service against Spain after the Russian; avalanches annul biometric marking and open windows for asset injection, a pattern confirmed with agents of the Directorate General for Studies and Documentation (DGED) in 2021; and corruption in the State Security Forces and Corps—two civil guards arrested in Operation Hades for the Tarajal narcotunnel (February 2025)—offers third-party services a vector for recruitment and kompromat without technical sophistication. The center of gravity of the risk has shifted from the fence to the sea, to the underground, and to the negotiation table with Rabat.

Sixth: structural asymmetry favors Morocco and deterrents have an expiration date. Rabat holds the migratory tap key, Washington's backing, the informational advantage of Pegasus, and control of the narrative; Spain maintains its position with external deterrents—the 2030 World Cup as a reputational inhibitor, European funding as anesthesia—that expire or run out. Italy's suspension of Schengen in 2026 demonstrates that each crisis erodes Spain's position in the European club, and the most probable scenario for 2026-2030 is that of recurrent instrumentalized crisis (medium probability, 40-50% cumulative), not stable agreed management.

Seventh: the discriminating variable is political, not technical

No investment in sensors, height, or personnel will alter the described trajectory: the fence will continue to delay the same. What discriminates between scenarios is the state of the Spanish-Moroccan relationship, the European and Atlantic coverage that Spain rebuilds before 2030, and the correction of two internal anomalies: the regulatory vacuum of rejection and the inefficiency of legal routes. Both are in Spanish hands; not addressing them is gifting third parties the judicial and reputational trigger for every future crisis.

From these conclusions derives the final assessment of this report: Spain lacks its own southern border doctrine and needs one. Seventy years of tactical responses have produced an expensive, legally fragile device dependent on the neighbor it precisely aims to contain. A southern border doctrine should integrate into a single framework the defense of the physical perimeter, control of the sea and underground, counterintelligence in flows, protection of deployed personnel, conditional compliance with European obligations and, above all, the reduction of dependence on the subcontracted gendarme: because a border whose tap key is in the hands of those who pressure it is not a controlled border, but a border negotiated under external conditions.

The 2030 horizon offers a limited window for this reconstruction. The recent history of Ceuta and Melilla teaches that crises are not avoided, they are managed; and they are better managed with their own rules written in calm times than with improvisation in times of avalanche. The alternative is not the status quo: it is the repetition of the 2021-2026 cycle with increasing human, judicial, and European costs.