MADRID (AP) — Spain's national intelligence agency issued multiple warnings before the Ceuta border crisis about a potential mass crossing of migrants from Morocco into the Spanish exclave in late July, according to declassified documents released by the government on Wednesday.
The trove of 40 documents, which includes alerts, intelligence reports, charts and communications from multiple law enforcement and intelligence agencies, appear to undermine what Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has said about the level of prior warning the government had before the sudden influx took place.
Major protests in Spain have taken place in response to the migrant arrivals, with critics blaming Sánchez's government for the crisis.
On July 29, a day before more than 72,000 people began pouring into the Spanish city neighboring Morocco, Spain's intelligence agency sent an alert via WhatsApp to the Spanish government's delegation in Ceuta about “a call on social media for an assault on the fence and by sea tomorrow at 8 p.m.”
“There are two different groups with a total of 180,000 followers," the declassified WhatsApp message from the intelligence agency said, “just to give you an idea of the reach of its spread."
A note by Spain's spy agency that day to Moroccan intelligence agencies warned of plans on social media for migrants to enter Ceuta on July 30 by climbing a border fence separating the exclave from Morocco, or by swimming around it, the documents show. It mentioned that migrants might take advantage of Moroccos' national Throne Day, celebrated every year on July 30.
That same day, Spain's national intelligence agency issued similar warnings about “several groups on Facebook and WhatsApp encouraging these attempts” in messages to Spain's Civil Guard police force.
Morocco's foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press on Wednesday about the report.
Sánchez has defended his government's handling of the crisis and has been careful not to criticize or accuse Morocco's government of orchestrating the incident. That has sparked further criticism, with opponents saying Sánchez is pandering to the Moroccan government.
The Spanish leader announced last week while speaking to lawmakers that the government would release certain files related to Spain's deadliest border crisis in living memory.
On Wednesday, a spokesperson from Sánchez's office rejected the idea that the declassified documents showed that there was prior warning about a mass crossing of the scale that took place between July 30 and 31.
“The published documents show that the information available prior to the massive influx did not make it possible to anticipate the magnitude the crisis ultimately reached, nor to gauge the necessary response sufficiently in advance,” the spokesperson said.
In the days immediately prior to the mass crossing, hundreds of migrants swimming or crossing from Morocco had reached Ceuta, which Spain’s Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska acknowledged at the time. He said that authorities were facing “an extraordinary, exceptional situation," and that the Spanish government was “dealing with it with the means that we already have deployed there permanently.”
