Nearly 50,000 people entered Ceuta within hours, writes columnist Pedro Narváez, drawing comparisons to two of the most consequential battles in Spanish history. He notes that the Almohad force at Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212 numbered around 60,000 fighters, and that roughly 50,000 men faced each other at Bailén in 1808. On both occasions, the outcome decided territorial control. The question, he suggests, is whether Ceuta’s outcome will too.
Narváez argues the crossing is not a story of desperate migrants but a geopolitical strategy in which a whistle blown at the diplomatic heights, as he puts it, can trigger a wave of chaos across the continent. He describes Spain as a country that always arrives late to its crises, discovering the damage only after the dust has settled.
The residents of Ceuta, popularly nicknamed caballas, are being circled by sharks with steel teeth, in Narváez’s framing: politicians and kings willing to sacrifice their own people for strategic gain. He points to what he describes as an alliance between Morocco’s King Mohamed VI and Donald Trump as a consequence of the Spanish government’s foreign policy missteps, including a visit to Algeria by Foreign Minister Albares and an offer of Spanish nationality to Sahrawis born under Spanish rule.
NATO, he concludes, will not intervene, and doubts many mainland Spaniards would volunteer to defend the enclave.
