Spanish police completed the largest single clearance operation of Ceuta’s informal shoreline camps at dawn on 11 October, bussing some 500 migrants off the Guano esplanade next to the Trampolín beach. More than 350 officers from the National Police’s Intervention and Prevention units, supported by the Guardia Civil, local police and army logistics, cordoned off the site at 08:00 and methodically woke residents who had been living under tarpaulins for weeks. Each migrant was offered a choice: return voluntarily to Morocco via the Tarajal border gate or accept transfer to the city’s Temporary Attention Centre for Foreigners (CATE), where biometric registration and initial asylum screening are carried out before assignment to reception facilities elsewhere in Spain. The Guano camp had swelled since late July, when several thousand people entered Ceuta by land and sea during a surge that overwhelmed the enclave’s formal reception system. Authorities had already dismantled smaller camps at the desalination plant, Benítez beach and Trampolín earlier in October; interior-minister-appointed crisis coordinator Ángel Víctor Torres said the goal of “full coastal normalisation” by 15 October has been achieved four days ahead of schedule. Torres reported that nearly 12,000 people have returned to Morocco—some voluntarily, some through formal readmission—since 10 August. The operation comes amid heightened regional tension: Spain re-introduced border checks on travellers arriving from Italy on 8 October, citing secondary movements linked to the Ceuta events, and Italy maintains reciprocal controls on arrivals from Spain. For multinational employers the clearance signals that Madrid is determined to avoid makeshift settlements that can become flashpoints. Companies rotating staff through Ceuta or nearby Algeciras should anticipate ID checks and intermittent traffic holds on routes to the border while security forces redeploy to patrol remaining gathering points in the city’s neighbourhoods. HR teams moving talent between Spain and Morocco should also note that voluntary return buses now run daily from CATE to Tarajal, easing cross-border labour mobility for Moroccan nationals who decide to regularise their status at home before re-entering Spain through legal channels.
Source: Europa Press
