Spain’s interior minister appealed for calm after Ceuta residents confronted police during protests over migrants who have remained in the North African enclave since a mass arrival.
Tensions have simmered across the territory of 80,000 people since at least 60,000 migrants crossed into Ceuta over several days in July, prompting a Europe-wide alert.
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Spain’s leftist government says most of those who arrived have now left the enclave, which covers 18.5 square kilometres. But thousands are still reported to be roaming the streets and sleeping on beaches.
Protests have grown more intense in recent days. Yesterday, demonstrators clashed with police at a beach where migrants had been sleeping.
The Spanish government said most of the migrants have returned to Morocco
In a separate incident, a soldier was injured after migrants threw stones at troops, and 12 Moroccan migrants were arrested.
Sources said two further arrests followed an attack on a police officer.
“Violence is not the answer,” Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska told parliament today.
“I call for calm and an end to any form of violence, because… violence is not the way to resolve any problem with the complexity of that facing Ceuta,” he added.
Juan Vivas, the head of Ceuta’s local government, said peaceful demonstrations “to demand the return to normality” were legitimate, but warned that authorities would act against anyone involved in vandalism.
“We totally reject the use of any kind of violence,” he said in an institutional address.
“No one can or should take the law into their own hands. The defence of Ceuta and the interests of its people can only be pursued through legality.”
Right-wing and far-right parties have called for all the migrants to be rounded up and returned to their countries of origin.
Mr Grande-Marlaska accused those parties of “inciting hatred and confrontation” in Ceuta.
The government has said every individual must be identified to establish whether they qualify for asylum or face deportation. Unaccompanied migrant children, it added, are entitled to special protection.
Ceuta and Melilla, another small Spanish territory in North Africa, make up Europe’s only land border with Africa.
