Spain Surrendered Its Borders, Trump Should Give Ceuta to Morocco

The collapse of border security in Ceuta on July 30 has exposed the fundamental weakness of Spanish sovereignty in North Africa, demonstrating that Madrid’s hold on its colonial enclaves can no longer be taken for granted by Western allies.

According to Jose Lev Alvarez writing in Washington Examiner, the crisis shattered any remaining illusions about Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s ability to defend territorial integrity. When Morocco engineered a migrant surge of 50,000 to 60,000 people into Ceuta, Madrid responded with a pathetic deployment of just 60 soldiers and 30 Civil Guard officers. The result was catastrophic: juvenile facilities swelled to 2,400% capacity and 67 people died, while Sánchez offered little beyond public relations spin.

The episode follows a well-established pattern of Moroccan leverage and Spanish capitulation. In 2021, Sánchez allowed terrorist Polisario Front leader Brahim Ghali to enter Spain under false identity. Morocco’s response was immediate: opening the migration valve and pushing nearly 10,000 people into Ceuta. After Moroccan intelligence services compromised the phones of Sánchez and senior ministers using Israeli-made Pegasus spyware, the panicked prime minister abandoned four decades of Spanish foreign policy to endorse Morocco’s autonomy plan for Western Sahara.

For years, Sánchez lectured allies on decolonization while exempting Spain’s own North African holdings. Morocco has now called that bluff repeatedly, demonstrating it can control migrant flows whenever it chooses while Spain proves incapable of policing its own borders.

The strategic implications extend far beyond Spanish pride. The Strait of Gibraltar represents the world’s most vital maritime chokepoint, yet NATO alliance membership cannot substitute for Madrid’s refusal to exercise state power. Sovereignty without enforcement is dangerous magical thinking, particularly when it fails to secure such critical infrastructure.

Alvarez argues that Washington must recognize this new reality and bypass Madrid’s authority entirely. The Pentagon and intelligence community should establish a Southern Strait operating picture with Rabat as the lead partner, treating Moroccan forces as the primary competent authority along the African shore. Spanish approval should no longer be considered an operational prerequisite when defending strategic lines that Sánchez’s coalition willingly abandons.

Congress Must Act Against Deliberate Border Failures

The analysis calls for Congress to forge a Hybrid Coercion Response Authority that would automatically suspend defense-technology transfers and intelligence sharing to any NATO member engineering its own demographic collapse. Sánchez’s reckless moves — selling dual-use material to Iran and legalizing more than one million illegal immigrants to secure his party’s survival — exemplify the systemic folly Washington can no longer afford to subsidize.

Instead, American funding, hardware, and intelligence assets should flow directly to the country actually enforcing sovereignty along the African shore: Morocco. A Gibraltar Security Guarantee should be offered to Rabat, providing advanced maritime surveillance in exchange for zero-tolerance interdiction and absolute cooperation against Iranian and Hezbollah networks in Northern Africa.

The same bureaucratic paralysis that delayed emergency action during the Valencia floods now leaves a critical NATO position completely undefended. Madrid has become an albatross actively endangering Western security interests, while King Mohammed VI stands ready to reclaim Morocco’s historic borders.

America must stop endorsing the fiction of Spanish colonialism in North Africa. Sovereignty belongs to nations willing and able to enforce it, not to colonial anachronisms that collapse at the first test of will.

With information from Washington Examiner