Canada’s EU Romance Is a Mistake

By John Gustavsson

Wednesday, September 23, 2026

 

Last week, the European Commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, surprised the world by announcing an offer to make Canada the first “associate member” of the European Union. What makes an “associate member” is not legally defined in any of the EU’s treaties, but there is no doubt that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney appears determined to embrace the EU as he seeks to reduce his country’s dependence on the North American market. After Donald Trump’s threats to turn Canada into the 51st state, Carney’s approach may seem reasonable — and, judging from the PM’s approval ratings, Canadians are, so far, on board.

 

Yet running to Brussels would be as big a mistake for Canada as it was for Britain.

 

Whatever Canada’s new relationship with the EU ends up looking like, it will be a much cozier relationship than before. Whereas Carney’s predecessor, Justin Trudeau, never missed an opportunity to emphasize Canada as an indigenous land and apologize for the sins of the settlers, Carney seems to have rediscovered his country’s European heritage, going as far as to label it “the most European of non-European countries.”

 

On Canada Day, CBC/Radio-Canada announced that the country would compete in the 2027 Eurovision Song Contest, by far the biggest music competition in the world, with around 160 million viewers. Joining the ESC is not cheap; indeed, several countries decline to participate every year citing the cost. Fortunately, Carney had increased the public broadcaster’s budget for this very purpose.

 

In May, Carney became the first non-European leader ever to attend the semiannual European Political Community summit, an intergovernmental summit attended by leaders of 48 European countries. Last year, he signed a Strategic Partnership of the Future with the EU, covering areas including trade and climate transition, as well as a security and defense partnership. An “associate membership” in the EU — whatever that term ends up meaning — could be seen as a logical next step, fitting with Carney’s ambition to double Canada’s non-U.S. exports over the next ten years.

 

Carney increasingly looks like an insecure high schooler trying to hang with the cool kids. But, much like in high school, the cool kids are not really all that cool.

 

First, Europe struggles with economic growth. Since the global financial crisis, the wealth gap between America and the EU — and especially the western EU — has widened, as Europe has struggled with weak and inconsistent growth. Economic shocks like those brought on by the war in Ukraine and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz have contributed, but taxation, an ill-conceived common currency, and regulatory policy in areas such as energy, climate, and tech, bear the brunt of the blame. It would make more sense for Canada to diversify by adding more members and deepening ties with the faster-growing Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), a trade pact that has nearly eliminated tariffs among signatory countries following the United States’ withdrawal from the preceding Trans-Pacific Partnership in 2017.

 

Supporters of Carney’s European adventures may counter that there is no need to choose — that Canada can diversify elsewhere while still deepening ties with Europe. But it is not that simple. Brussels rarely gives deep market access without pulling partners toward its rule book. If “associate membership” turns into dynamic alignment, Canada, while still formally able to sign other foreign trade agreements, would find those deals harder to use: Goods and data would still have to clear European process rules, including rules written after the ink is dry.

 

Nowhere is this more dangerous than on climate policy. Whereas Carney has begun the process of rolling back his predecessor’s unrealistic goals, the EU is still charging full steam ahead, even implementing climate tariffs (the “carbon-border adjustment mechanism”) on its trade partners. That the EU climate regime is not exactly suitable for an oil-, gas-, and minerals-producing country should go without saying.

 

It may seem counterintuitive that Europe would ever try to force its environmentalism on Canada, seeing as how Canada’s minerals and natural gas — two sectors that EU rules could devastate, if applied to Canada — are part of what makes the country attractive to the EU. But in Brussels, the link between overregulation and underinvestment is not properly understood. Sure, policymakers want rare earths and natural gas — but since that’s never stopped them from overregulating those industries almost to extinction in Europe, Canada should not assume it will get a free pass. The mere threat of future regulatory alignment with the EU could deter investment into Canada’s extractive industries.

 

For Canada’s tech sector, the EU poses an even bigger threat. The EU prides itself on a “regulate first, ask questions later” approach that has strangled innovation in the union. If Canada is pushed to adapt EU tech regulations, the effect would be even worse than in Europe, since geographical proximity means Canada’s tech sector competes with the U.S. and Silicon Valley more directly than Europe’s does.

 

The same is true for the auto and chemicals industries as well as many other sectors, and geographical proximity makes it easier not just for businesses but also for skilled Canadians in affected sectors to move to the United States, something more and more of them are already doing.

 

Carney may feel emboldened by polls showing that large majorities of Canadians favor closer ties with the EU, with one poll even showing 57 percent would support full membership. But the idea of greater integration with the EU and the reality of such a path are starkly different. Brits once overwhelmingly voted in favor of EU membership, but decades of clashes between Britain’s Anglo-Saxon worldview and Brussels’s continental ways eventually led to a bitter divorce. And more than a European nation, Canada — with apologies to Quebec — is first and foremost a British nation, and that is something Carney ought to consider before he traps his country in a union that neither he nor his voters fully understand.

 

Of course, Trump was wrong to ever suggest that Canada should become America’s 51st state. It would be nothing short of tragic if Canada, in its rush to safeguard its sovereignty, merely ended up giving it away to another foreign bidder.

Europe’s Misguided Plans for Pursuing Digital Independence

By John Gustavsson

Sunday, August 30, 2026

 

After years of living in denial, the European Union has seemingly finally noticed that it lacks something the U.S. has: a vibrant tech sector. Europe’s lack of a tech industry has increasingly left it dependent on America and Silicon Valley. Two new initiatives aim to mitigate this issue and take Europe toward “digital independence.” Sadly, they are both misguided.

 

The first is EuroStack, an initiative that originated from a multiparty conference at the European Parliament in September 2024. Out of this came a policy report envisioning a way to break European dependency across raw materials and chips, networks, cloud, software, data, and AI through €300 billion of investment across ten years.

 

In parallel, the industry-led EuroStack Industry Initiative began its work lobbying policymakers to create artificial demand for European tech through public procurement (its pillars are “Buy European,” “Sell European,” and “Fund European”). EuroStack has been publicly endorsed by several European leaders, as well as by the European Parliament’s industry, research, and energy (ITRE) committee.

 

While one cannot fault the European tech sector for looking for a bailout, it is unlikely it will be able to grow as long as the regulatory attitude toward tech remains hostile. The EU itself is the main culprit through regulations such as the GDPR, Digital Services Act, Digital Markets Act, and AI Act. It is, perhaps, quite telling that the EU tech sector seems to have given up hope that these regulations may be lifted and instead seems to simply aim to have some of the costs of compliance reimbursed through public procurement contracts.

 

Yet, the idea that €300 billion over ten years would bring Europe anywhere close to digital independence is ludicrous. In Silicon Valley, this kind of money is spare change. Spread across an entire continent’s technological supply chain, it looks more like miserly alms to the impoverished EU tech sector.

 

The industry wing has conceded as much and made it clear that the €300 billion figure is not the real prize, going as far as to say it’s become a “distraction.” What they most want is a slice of the demand that Europe already sends abroad: most importantly, the roughly €260 billion that European organizations spend on U.S. cloud and software annually.

 

Most of the €300 billion would not be a single new line on the EU’s budget. Yet, for contrast, over the 2021–2027 period, the EU has earmarked approximately €661 billion to be spent on the climate transition. Clearly, nobody in Brussels anticipated the AI race when going all in on climate. Now, with so much of the budget already dedicated to a transition that is leaving Europe less technologically independent by the day, options to genuinely support the continent’s tech sector in a meaningful way are far more limited.

 

Beyond deregulation, Europe’s best chance is — for once — to follow Sweden’s lead: As one of the only European countries that is punching above its weight in producing “unicorns,” Sweden could teach the rest of the European Union a lesson on facilitating venture capital growth. For a high-tax economy, Sweden’s treatment of start-ups and serial entrepreneurs is shockingly libertarian, with highly preferential tax treatment of employee stock options and angel investors. And of course, we don’t have silly things like wealth taxes.

 

Limiting public procurement options through “Buy European” rules is likely to have the opposite effect: Unable to simply purchase digital services from whoever offers the best quality, public sectors throughout the union would become less efficient, giving taxpayers even less bang for the large buck they pay in taxes in most of the EU. It is also debatable if such rules will even prove to be compatible with the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Government Procurement Agreement — not that anyone seems to care about the WTO anymore.

 

More troublingly, a tech sector kept alive through the life support of taxpayer money would not be a tech sector that could meaningfully innovate in a way that contributes to productivity. Instead of optimizing for everyday users, businesses will optimize for tenders. Once businesses are on the receiving end of bureaucratic chest compressions, their goal turns from pleasing consumers to pleasing the bureaucrats pounding on their ribcages. Of course, considering the EU’s hostile attitude toward tech, it may not view an enthralled tech industry as a bad thing; at least it will be easier to regulate.

 

Which brings us to EuroSky, a project launched publicly in April this year by the Netherlands-based Modal Foundation, providing a European-hosted infrastructure for the AT Protocol, which is the same open standard that Bluesky runs on.

 

While a separate initiative from EuroStack, it too seeks to bring digital independence to Europe by creating a European social media ecosystem with data servers based in Europe and a shared layer of social media infrastructure. Among its founders is Sebastian Vogelsang, who also founded the Bluesky-based app Flashes.

 

With all EuroSky social media platforms based in Europe, the shared content moderation envisioned by its founders would by necessity have to align with EU law. Apparently not seeing the irony, Robin Berjon, another one of its architects, described EuroSky as a way to get around “authoritarian infrastructure providers.”

 

While he did not explicitly name Elon Musk as the “authoritarian” in question, Musk has a long-running conflict with the EU, with European policymakers repeatedly threatening to ban X. It is perhaps not a coincidence that the very first homegrown EuroSky social media app is a microblogging platform, Mu.

 

Of course, on its own, any EuroSky social media platform will fail for the same reason that Bluesky, Threads, and all others did: The number of people willing to abandon a thriving platform because they dislike the owner’s political views is small. Competitors therefore almost automatically become intolerable leper colonies full of bitter people who use their competing platforms for little else than just complaining about the other platform and posting stuff that would not be allowed or would not be prioritized by the other platform’s algorithm.

 

Prior to Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, several right-wing alternatives like Parler failed like Bluesky to gain widespread adoption because their initial user bases of angry political radicals scared off any users other than those on the fringes of politics.

 

That is not to say that EuroSky platforms may not play any role. One reason European policymakers have failed to ban X and other repeat offenders of the Digital Services Act is that they know there is no alternative they could direct users to if these platforms were geoblocked. Without an alternative, the political price of taking away platforms that users have come to rely on for years would just be too great. This is where EuroSky would come in.

 

While digital independence is a serious issue for Europe, neither EuroStack nor EuroSky offers serious answers: Europe does not lack for engineers, capital, and market size. What it lacks is a political class willing to let go of its “regulate first, ask questions later” attitude toward tech innovation. Neither public procurement nor a “safe space” social media ecosystem will ever replace the successful formula that once built Silicon Valley: allowing people to build things that the state has not already approved.

Identifying the Enemy

By Andrew Stuttaford

Saturday, August 15, 2026

 

I wrote last year about the way in which Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, a Social Democrat, led her center-left party to take a tougher stance on immigration after she became its leader in 2015. Not unconnectedly, she became Denmark’s prime minister in 2019. Unsurprisingly, Frederiksen has reiterated her position on immigration in the wake of the events in Ceuta, and in language unimaginable from almost anywhere else on the left.

 

On August 12, the Danish parliament debated Ceuta and its aftermath. Among Frederiksen’s remarks were these (translation by Google Translate, but from my very, very limited knowledge of Danish it looks to be accurate):

 

A few years ago, Denmark stood very much alone in Europe. Now a majority of EU countries support it, and this has made it possible to create concrete political results. We have succeeded in changing EU legislation so that it is now possible to establish reception and departure canters [for illegal migrants] in countries outside the EU, and . . . Danish authorities are working concretely to make it a reality. In other words: Denmark is now pushing Europe forward, and we intend to continue to do so — also when it comes to the issue of legalizing illegal migrants who are already in Europe, because we are against that. We are against that. It is no secret that I and the Spanish prime minister deeply disagree on immigration policy. We do so at a national level, and we do so at a European level. The Spanish government can make its own national decisions, just as Denmark can. But I and we will not accept that Danish society has to pay the price for decisions in Spain that we fundamentally disagree with. [Emphasis added.]

 

In other words, given the rules governing internal movement within the EU, the amnesty for illegal migrants forced through by Spain’s far-left prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, had implications elsewhere in the bloc. That’s something that Sánchez, who has complained loudly about a lack of “solidarity” within the EU after the Ceuta crisis would do well to remember, a point that Frederiksen addressed later in the debate.

 

Frederiksen also turned her attention to the danger posed to Europe by “undemocratic forces.” After identifying Russia as the principal threat, she then turned her attention to what she referred to a “big enemy that has started to grow from within (en stor fjende er begyndter begyndt at vokse op indefra).”

 

Who might this be?

 

It is foreigners who have come to Europe [“udlændinge, der er kommet til Europe”], it is Hamas supporters, it is people who commit terror against European societies, it is people who do not recognize our fundamental European values, it is people who sympathize with some of the darkest forces in this world. So Europe is threatened. The problem is that we are threatened both from outside and now from within, but it is not because of a disagreement between the Danish and Spanish governments, but because of people with an Islamic background [“folk med islamisk baggrund”] who do not want the open, free European society, unfortunately.

 

As a reminder, Frederiksen was on the left and is on the left. To Bernie Sanders, she must be the Dane from hell.

 

Moreover, she has just co-signed a letter with Italy’s redoubtable (oh, sorry, “far right”) Giorgia Meloni, who is, in many respects, Frederiksen’s polar opposite, as the duo acknowledge in the letter:

 

We are aware that many might be wondering about our cooperation. We come from very different political backgrounds, and we certainly do not agree on everything.

 

But:

 

We do not accept uncontrolled immigration to Europe, and we have promoted a strict immigration policy, both in our Nations and in Europe.

 

And they defend their stance not only on conventional grounds (problems with crime and so on), but something deeper:

 

We are both proud of Europe’s Christian cultural heritage and we want to protect it. We expect those who come to our countries and choose to make Europe their home to respect our values and not seek to impose ways of life on us that we do not share.

 

The reference to “cultural heritage” is carefully chosen. This is not, it should be stressed, some sort of theological declaration. Meloni is a Catholic, if somewhat idiosyncratically so, and a churchgoer. Frederiksen is a member of the Church of Denmark but is not a believer. However, for reasons tied to culture and social cohesion, she is a “virkelig hardcore tilhænger” (a really hardcore supporter) of the Danish church, a stance, incidentally, that has its equivalents in the home of the Church of England.

 

Contrast the attitude of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of France’s hard left LFI. He will be running (again) for the French presidency next year and, based on current polling, he may emerge as the leading candidate of the left.

 

Mélenchon talks of a “New France” formed and defined by a process he refers to as “créolisation” (a concept borrowed from Édouard Glissant, a poet born in the French Caribbean), something new formed by the mix of traditional French and immigrant culture, rather than the traditional French model which is, at least in theory, assimilationist.

 

Mélenchon’s approach is, above all, a matter of political calculation. He has realized that the white Catholic working class (“les ouvriers blancs catholiques”) are not going to help build the path to socialism he is looking for. He seems to have concluded that citizens of the nascent New France just might. Given France’s demographics, that has meant a sharp turn toward Muslim voters, which seems to be working. In the 2024 European elections, an estimated 62 percent of those French Muslims who voted (there was a high abstention rate) opted for the LFI and an estimated 69 percent chose Mélenchon in the first round of the 2022 presidential elections.

 

Mélenchon dismisses talk of an informal Islamo-leftist “partnership.” He also denies allegations of antisemitism.

 

Of course he does.

 

Fortunately, his sort of politics would be impossible in New York City, say, or Michigan.

 

Oh.

The Roots of the Ceuta Crisis

National Review Online

Tuesday, August 04, 2026

 

The massive (if largely temporary) incursion of about 70,000 illegal migrants out of Morocco into Ceuta, a Spanish city of 80,000 people on the North African coast, has set off a debate that, to say the least, has been wide-ranging.

 

We will start at the beginning. Ceuta has been under Spanish or Portuguese rule since it was taken by the Portuguese in 1415, almost 40 years before the fall of Constantinople. Asserting that it is unacceptable to have a Spanish city on the African mainland is a variant of blood-and-soil nationalism that, if taken to its logical conclusion, would mean that Turkey should quit East Thrace and Istanbul.

 

Self-determination is the better principle. Ceutans are Spaniards who want their city to remain Spanish. That wish should be respected. Ceuta juts into Morocco, which argues that Ceuta (and Melilla, its “twin”) are part of its patrimony, a claim without any legitimacy. If there is any substance behind recent hints of discreet U.S. support for Morocco over this, it is evidence of appallingly misguided thinking. Spain’s hard-left prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, is profoundly and dangerously anti-American, but his time will pass. The U.S. should not confuse Spain with Sánchez or, for that matter, Morocco with reliability.

 

Much of the controversy over the influx into Ceuta revolves around Sánchez’s responsibility for it. Earlier this year, his government forced through an amnesty for illegal immigrants. About 1 million people applied, roughly double the official, but widely disbelieved, estimate. Eventually, family reunification provisions may increase the total admitted or regularized to, on some estimates, between 2 and 3 million. After, typically, five years of legal residence, they will be able to settle elsewhere in the EU. Unsurprisingly, the news of this amnesty horrified many in a bloc already wrestling with the consequences of mass immigration and badly scarred by the Merkel debacle a decade ago. Thanks to the EU’s rules on free movement within its borders, an immigration problem in one member-state can easily spill over into another.

 

The amnesty sent a signal to would-be immigrants. It was not the first in Spain, and there was no reason to think that it would be the last, Moreover, just weeks ago, the Spanish Supreme Court had opened a loophole in the special immigration regime in place for Ceuta and Melilla. Under this, asylum-seekers can be turned back at the border but, the court ruled (for reasons that are now being addressed), not if they swam there.

 

People respond to incentives, whether real or imagined. Some sort of surge was foreseeable. Indeed, there are claims that Madrid was warned that one was on the way. The government’s response has ranged from denial to the somewhat more credible position that it was given no warning of the size of any incursion. Whatever the truth, no new steps were taken to deal with a surge, a negligent coda to a reckless amnesty.

 

The sheer size of the crowd that overwhelmed Ceuta’s inadequate defenses and poured into the city has understandably given rise to suggestions that the incursion was organized. But by whom?

 

The most obvious suspect is the Moroccan government. Not only does it claim that Ceuta is Moroccan, but also, some argue, it was angered by a recent visit by Sánchez to Algiers during which he described Algeria as a “strategic partner.” Morocco and Algeria do not get along. Under the circumstances, for Morocco to take advantage of the opportunity created by Madrid to demonstrate Ceuta’s vulnerability would make a lot of sense. There are reports that the Moroccan government encouraged the exodus, and there are others that suggest something more complex. If only, perhaps, for diplomatic reasons, Sánchez has distanced himself from the accusations against Rabat and cast some of the blame on people-traffickers and, one way or another, social media.

 

Sánchez was, however, enraged by criticism from some EU countries (above all, Italy, which also introduced temporary checks on non-EU citizens traveling directly from Spain) and their supposed lack of “solidarity.” However, in a letter sent on Saturday, 22 EU prime ministers (the EU has 27 member-states) made clear what they thought of Sánchez’s solidarity. They stressed the importance of working jointly against illegal immigration, an approach that included “addressing all policies that can serve as pull factors, such as the regularization of [a] very large number of irregular migrants.” Ouch.

 

In an attempt to defuse matters, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the EU Commission, has praised the speedy resolution of the Ceuta crisis (even if more migrants remain there than was first claimed). She is calling for tighter external border controls, something that obviously makes sense. These would, however, have done nothing to stop Sánchez’s amnesty. So, what to do? We would recommend offering member-states a choice. If they want to preserve their prerogative to unilaterally pass such measures, they should agree to withdraw from the EU’s border-free Schengen Area. This is unlikely to happen, though, and Schengen will limp on until it collapses.

The Ceuta Migrant Wave Was a Power Play by Morocco Against Spain

By Jim Geraghty

Monday, August 03, 2026

 

Most of the commentary on Ceuta that you’ll find on platforms like X reiterates the same four points.

 

·         If we hadn’t reelected Trump, this is what America would look like.

 

·         This is what you get when you elect socialists like Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.

 

·         The Moroccans attempting to cross the border are overwhelmingly military-age males, so this isn’t migration, it’s an invasion.

 

·         The 1973 French novel The Camp of the Saints is more than a xenophobic tirade, it’s a prediction of our future.

 

All those arguments are true to varying degrees. Most notably, in February the Sánchez government said it would offer amnesty, expecting to legalize an estimated half million immigrants who had arrived illegally in recent years. More than 1.3 million applied for the amnesty. Under the laws of Europe’s Schengen area, if you’re a Spanish citizen, you can travel or work in 28 other countries. (Our Andrew Stuttaford, back on July 3: “This amnesty, the seventh in 40 years, will only encourage more arrivals. Needless to say, it is a mistake.”)

 

But there are also a couple of wrinkles in the rush to Ceuta that are getting overlooked, although not by John Gustavsson or Josh Treviño, both writing for National Review Online.

 

On July 20, Prime Minister Sánchez visited Algeria:

 

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in Algiers on Monday that he sought to deepen ties with Algeria, as the countries mend relations after a dispute over Western Sahara.

 

Sanchez told reporters that the visit, a first in four years, held “particular importance” for Spain, which views Algeria as “not only a neighboring country but also a strategic partner.” . . .

 

Ties between Algiers and Madrid deteriorated in 2022 when Spain backed Morocco’s sovereignty claim over Western Sahara, reversing its decades-long neutral stance on the conflict over its former colony.

 

The governments of Algeria and Morocco do not get along and have not gotten along for a long time. They both want to be the big dog in northwest Africa, and any gain by Algeria is seen as a loss for Morocco, and vice versa.  Algeria cut ties with Morocco in 2021, and the land border between those two countries has been closed since 1994.

 

There’s even an arms race:

 

Against this backdrop, the two countries began to prepare for the possibility that their dispute might evolve into armed conflict. Both sides ramped up military spending. Morocco bought Israel’s anti-drone Skylock Dome system in November and its Harop drones in December. In February 2022, it additionally acquired Barak MX, a modular Israeli-made system that can knock down both missiles and drones. Finally, in April 2023, the U.S. State Department approved the sale of eighteen U.S. HIMARS multiple rocket launchers, along with other military equipment, to Morocco.

 

Algeria rushed to keep pace with these purchases. In November 2022, the Algerian parliament approved a staggering increase in the 2023 military budget to around $23 billion, up from around $11 billion the previous year. In late 2022, local media indicated that the authorities were preparing to buy Su-57 stealth jets, SU-34 bombers and Su-30 fighters, in addition to new air defence systems, such as the S-400, from Russia. To diversify its weapons sources, Algeria turned to Türkiye to buy Anka S+ drones and to China to acquire Halcon drones, to give two examples.

 

Do tens of thousands of people spontaneously decide, all by themselves, to rush a fenced border? No, they do not.

 

From the New York Times (emphasis added):

 

Like so many others in Morocco, Mohammed Ahmidho saw on his social media feeds early Thursday that the heavily guarded border his country shared with the Spanish territory of Ceuta was open.

 

Soon enough, he joined a crowd in the tens of thousands, many of whom were astonished to see Moroccan police urge them, as he recalled, to “come to Spain.”

 

It is still unclear why so many people came to Ceuta. Many of the Moroccans who wandered around Ceuta on Friday wondered if the doors hadn’t opened because of some unknown plan by Morocco, which has been accused of using immigrant flows in the past for political pressure.

 

“I don’t know why they let us through,” said Ajoub el-Arrot, 24, who said he heard about the open border on social media. “Maybe they had some political reason. They opened the border and let everyone go by.”

 

He added, “When there are political problems, Morocco opens the doors and tells us to go.”

 

Douae Tabit, 19, who also said she heard about the unchecked crossing on social media, said it went “viral” and passed by word of mouth, attracting people from all around Morocco. Fluent in English, French and Spanish, she said she worked as a nurse and photographer and spontaneously decided to take advantage of the opportunity.

 

Moroccan police do not just randomly encourage people to cross into Spain without documentation.

 

Do you think it’s a coincidence that less than two weeks after Sánchez went to Algeria and declared that country a “strategic partner,” the Moroccan police started encouraging tens of thousands of Moroccans to attempt to cross the border into Ceuta? Me neither. Yes, Sánchez’s amnesty policies are a factor in this, but what happened here is that the Moroccan government, irked that Sánchez is trying to build a better relationship with Algeria, sent a signal to the Spanish prime minister that it can make life for him, his government, and the people of Ceuta miserable, any time it wants.

 

In the combined fiscal years 2024–2025, the U.S. government sent $112 million in foreign aid to Morocco. According to ForeignAssistance.gov, the U.S. has sent $1.4 million so far this fiscal year, although that data may be incomplete.

 

One last point: Andrew Stuttaford notices with irritation that the National Security, Department of State, and Related Programs Appropriations Act of 2027, which passed the House nearly unanimously a few weeks ago, states:

 

The Committee notes that the Spanish-administered cities of Ceuta and Melilla are located in Moroccan territory and remain the subject of Morocco’s longstanding claim.

 

And:

 

The Committee supports efforts by the Secretary of State to encourage diplomatic engagement between Morocco and Spain on the future status of Ceuta and Melilla.

 

“The wording of the committee’s report has no legal status, but it was, at the very least, careless,” Andrew concludes. “Making matters worse, it didn’t pass unnoticed in either Spain or Morocco.”

 

Was someone in our government, irritated with Spain over the amount of its NATO spending, attempting to stick a thumb in the eye of the Spanish government?

 

By the way, for all the legitimate gripes about Spain and its contribution to NATO, let us observe that the Spanish government has increased its defense spending by 70 percent in the last decade; its investment of 32 percent on equipment is above the 20 percent required by NATO and actually a bit higher than the U.S. level at 29.7 percent. Spain spent $40 billion on defense in 2025; we all love the Poles, but Poland spent about $46 billion. The reason Spain’s defense spending as a share of gross domestic product seems so much lower is that Spain has a GDP just above $2 trillion, while Poland — now in the top 20 economies in the world — has a GDP of around $1 trillion.

 

The Cyberattacks That President Trump Doesn’t Want to Acknowledge

 

Considering the importance of what it does, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is surprisingly low-profile. It could use a CBS prime-time drama or two. Then again, the agency may well like it that way; like offensive lineman, you usually hear about the more obscure federal law enforcement agencies only when something goes wrong.

 

Efforts to hack into critical infrastructure are widespread: in 2024, Check Point Research documented 1,162 cyberattacks on U.S. utilities, a 75 percent year-over-year increase. Given those numbers, perhaps it’s good that we hear about CISA so rarely. But the agency regularly puts out new alerts about foreign cyber threats. (Keep in mind that “approximately 50 to 85 percent of critical infrastructure is privately owned, depending on the sector, from large corporations to small and medium-sized businesses.” So it’s up to the private company to make sure its cyber defenses are up to the task.) China and Russia may take the gold and silver in the cyber-threat Olympics, but the Iranians consistently edge out the North Koreans for the bronze.

 

In February 2024, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned six officials in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Cyber-Electronic Command for a November 2023 attack on the Municipal Water Authority of Aliquippa, Pa.

 

CISA put out alerts regarding “malicious cyber activities conducted by advanced persistent threat cyber actors affiliated with the Iranian Government’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps” or similar Iranian threats in August 2024, October 2024, and December 2024.

 

Also in 2024, President Trump’s campaign said it had been targeted by “an Iranian military intelligence unit in June sending ‘a spear-phishing email to a high-ranking official of a presidential campaign from a compromised email account of a former senior advisor.’”

 

In mid-March, the U.S. Justice Department “announced the seizure of four domains as part of an ongoing effort to disrupt hacking and transnational repression schemes conducted by the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security.” Later that month, “cyber criminals linked to Iran accessed FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal email account.”

 

Then, on July 30, the FBI put out a new public service announcement:

 

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and Environmental Protection Agency are issuing this Public Service Announcement to warn critical infrastructure asset owners and operators that malicious cyber actors are conducting cyber-attacks targeting Operational Technology devices, including Rockwell Automation/Allen-Bradley Programmable Logic Controllers , specifically MicroLogix 1100 and 1400 series. Since July 27 2026, Water and Wastewater Sector utility companies in at least seven states have reported incidents to the FBI, and some of that activity degraded water operations.

 

Minnesota and Michigan have been identified as two of those states.

 

Now, the most recent PSAs did not specifically state that the Iranians were doing this. But we know from past attacks like the one in Aliquippa, Pa., that this is the Iranian modus operandi.

 

Anyway, here’s our president on Friday:

 

Today, I just want to mention that we heard in Minnesota there was a cyberattack and they blame it on Iran. I don’t think so. I think — I blame it on Minnesota because they’re grossly incompetent. There was a cyberattack of 30 water plants, and I would blame it on Minnesota and the governor, the corrupt governor of Minnesota. They like to say, oh, it’s Iran. Iran should be so lucky. Iran’s got bigger problems than worrying about Minnesota. This month it was announced that inflation is dropping at the fastest rate in more than six years. Walmart, Sam’s Club, Giant Eagle and others are slashing prices by hundreds of grocery stores.

 

And then later in that same appearance:

 

I don’t think — no, I think that Minnesota is behind it. You know who’s behind it, Minnesota, because they’re grossly incompetent. I think the governor’s behind it. I don’t think there was an Iranian cyberattack. I think that Minnesota ought to get its act together. It’s one of the worst-run states. JD will tell you. He found tremendous corruption in Minnesota.

 

And how about the attacks on water systems in those six other states, Mr. President? Do you think “the governor’s behind it” for all of those, too? You think Tim Walz is the criminal mastermind behind all of these cyberattacks?

 

Our critical systems are under attack, and our rambling, erratic, living-in-his-own-world president does not want to acknowledge it. If he did publicly recognize that Iran is trying to harm Americans through their water systems, the public might be rather upset by the latest cancellation of a massive military response against the Iranian regime.

 

Oh, and under this administration, CISA has gotten significantly smaller:

 

At the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the government’s top cyber defense body protecting U.S. election systems, nearly 1,000 CISA personnel — or nearly one-third of the agency’s workforce — had left or been removed from active service by mid-2025.

 

Some were terminated, while others resigned or took administrative leave. Others had contracts that were not renewed or their programs were shut down. Altogether, staffing lingered at around 2,500, down from approximately 3,400 a year earlier.

 

Hey, didn’t our president just give a big prime-time speech about how “the election system we have dangerously exposes and really exposes [us], like levels never thought possible, to hacking, exploitation, and foreign interference”? If you’re so worried about foreign hacking and exploitation, why are you dramatically cutting the number of staff at the federal agency designed to fight foreign hacking and exploitation?

 

ADDENDUM: Out in Ohio, Republican Senator Bernie Moreno writes of his son-in law, Republican Congressman Max Miller:

 

If there are any basic standards of character required to hold elected office, Max Miller fails them. He should not serve in the House of Representatives. I believe Max Miller needs to seek professional help to end the clear pattern of abuse he has left in his wake. I believe he should not be free to continue endangering others until he does.

 

 

Spain and Europe’s Crisis of Meaning

By Joshua S. Treviño

Tuesday, August 04, 2026

 

The immediate Ceuta crisis may have receded, with most of the 60,000 invaders having returned to Morocco, but it leaves in its wake a series of follow-on crises for Spain, Europe, and America alike.

 

The Spanish predicament engages problems both foreign and domestic. The Moroccan state, having demonstrated its ability to overrun Spanish territory at will, has experienced neither counter nor penalty and is unlikely to do so. At the strategic level, Spanish defense confronts a problem long-known and also long-ignored, in the imperative to keep the difficult-to-defend Plazas de Soberanía strewn upon the North African coast secured: a challenge that becomes acute when Morocco leverages hybrid warfare. That level of warfare, exploiting “civilian” means and targeting systemic non-military vulnerabilities, is uniquely effective when its targets will not recognize it as warfare, and therefore do not bring the full array of capabilities to bear against it. Spanish governance is therefore confronted with three interrelated imperatives: to maintain a qualitative superiority versus Moroccan means, to recognize hybrid warfare as such, and to use the full spectrum of state power against it. This is easy to diagnose but exceptionally difficult to undertake, especially for a Western government of the left.

 

That government of the left, in Madrid’s case, is another of Spain’s problems. It is manifestly true that the Moroccan state bears direct responsibility for the immediate crisis, but its actions ought to be seen as opportunistic. That opportunity was presented by the government in Madrid. The Socialist regime of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has signaled throughout its tenure that it is inimical to Spanish identity, heritage, and sovereignty: from waging cultural war upon Spanish and Catholic Church sites and symbols within Spain, to pushing through a hasty and ill-considered program of legalization for extraordinary numbers of illegal immigrants, to forming its own government upon a base of concessions to territorial separatists. Based upon the record of the past three years alone, a Moroccan calculus that now is a good time to test Spanish territorial integrity is not irrational.

 

Sánchez has further achieved something extraordinary, brought to light in the international reactions to the Ceuta crisis, that he did not expect after posturing himself as the anti-Trump leader of the global left: near-total isolation of Spain in its moment of crisis. Having assiduously courted global anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian sentiment, and having sought maximum visibility in his opposition to the American war upon Iran, Sánchez gained no support whatsoever from the Arab and Muslim world when his nation’s territory was invaded by one of their own. Having positioned himself as the stalwart counter to an unpopular-in-Europe American leadership, Sánchez received no meaningful support whatsoever from European nations when Spanish territory, which means European Union territory, was violated. Worse than that, the general discussion within Europe centered upon how to isolate and punish Spain for failing to do its part in securing European borders. Having made Spain the sole NATO power to refuse the 5 percent defense-spending mandate, Sánchez was confronted with well-earned American remonstrances and reminders that American policy increasingly favors Morocco, which is at least a state with fruitful direction and purpose.

 

Spain is a victim in the Ceuta crisis, it is true: but the Spanish political leadership in power is its primary victimizer.

 

The Spanish political leadership not in power, facing a national election in the coming year, is now confronted with its own choices. Spain’s political landscape features two major parties of the right. One, the venerable Partido Popular, may be broadly described as a technocratic right, managerial and experienced. It is the larger of the two. The other, Vox, is smaller but historically more oriented toward issues of Spanish cultural inheritance. Both parties’ leaders, Alberto Núñez Feijóo of Partido Popular and Santiago Abascal of Vox, have seen fit to go to Ceuta in the wake of the crisis — as has, it should be noted, Sánchez himself. (One may ask why King Felipe VI has not gone, as might seem appropriate, and the probable answer is that the Socialist government has blocked the trip.) Whether Spain’s right, across both parties, can leverage this moment into something larger remains to be seen. The movement writ large, across the past 20 years, has not been as aggressive in the defense of Spanish identity and heritage as the left has been aggressive in diminishing both. If 60,000 Moroccans storming a Spanish city of 80,000 citizens does not inspire resolve, it is difficult to imagine what will.

 

Something must, because Spain is on its own. The enervated project of the European Union has shown its quality in this crisis just as much as Spanish Socialism has, and it looks just as weakened in its own way. The European powers have had much time and opportunity to reflect upon their self-defense and its challenges, from the 2014 Russian seizure of Crimea, to the 2015 migrant crisis, to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine proper, to the post-2024 American reorientation away from European defense, to the 2026 Iranian attacks upon European territory and energy supplies. Now, a European-power city is briefly overrun, and the general reaction of Europe is directed against that European power, and not against the Moroccan state proximately responsible for the overrunning. At this writing, 22 EU member states have called for an “emergency” meeting on Spanish irresponsibility and remedies for it. On the one hand, Spain’s Socialists deserve it; on the other hand, European preference for focusing upon process changes within Europe to the exclusion of confronting the external threat speaks volumes.

 

An American with ordinary historical consciousness might note that Europe finds itself in the era of America’s own Articles of Confederation, but with no Americans to set it right. What does Europe mean if Europe will not preserve itself?

 

From that American perspective, we learn much, little good, of the state of Spanish and European governance now. Yet there are reasons for optimism, if we discern them. The European response is insufficient, but it is also the opposite of 2015: The general reaction is to solidify borders, not open them, and this is progress. Spain will have elections no later than late-summer 2027, and the Spanish right — which contains within itself many good patriots whom Americans would recognize as such — may rescue both the situation and their country. Finally, the United States since January 2025 has arrived at the right policy formula for dealing with threats like the ones confronting Ceuta and Europe at large. Borders must be sealed, mass migration must be ended, benefits to illegal entry (from state welfare to remittances and beyond) must be stopped, human traffickers must be confronted and pursued, terror designations must be issued, state sponsors must suffer state consequences, and the full array of national power, including the military, must be brought to bear for all of it. All this requires recognizing hybrid warfare for what it is. What the Americans have imposed with much success in the Caribbean basin is equally appropriate for the Mediterranean basin. We have the lessons and the experience — we only await the partners with whom to share both.

When Following the Rules Leads to Disaster

By Graeme Wood

Saturday, August 01, 2026

 

On July 8, Spain’s supreme court issued a seemingly reasonable decision, unaware that by the end of the month, it would contribute to the deaths of at least 57 people, many by drowning. The court ruled that people who had migrated illegally could be sent back summarily only if they’d circumvented a physical barrier at the border. If no barrier exists—if they’d walked across open ground, say, or swum—then the government must go through a much more complicated process to deport them.

 

And if you’re trying to swim to Europe from Africa, there may be no better destination than Ceuta, a speck of Spanish territory in North Africa, surrounded by Morocco on its western edge and the Mediterranean elsewhere. Every year, some migrants try to swim to Ceuta, especially in the summer, when the waters are relatively calm. Ceuta has a facility that can process about 500 people at a time. But Thursday, 100 times that number—an estimated 50,000 people—made an amphibious attempt to swarm Ceuta and emigrate illegally from Morocco.

 

This was evidently a coordinated attempt, assisted by social media. One Facebook group, the now-defunct “Hraga Ceuta,” reportedly featured exact maps of the three-hour maritime journey from the Moroccan town of Fnideq, which bypassed the land border with Ceuta and ensured that anyone who arrived alive would break no barriers and would land on sand or rocks rather than at a fence or turnstile. People showed up with fins, wet suits, and floaties. They discussed going in together on kayaks and coordinating their departures. Their conditions on arrival were not all dire. An El País reporter in Ceuta met an unaccompanied 16-year-old girl, still wet from the sea, her mascara runny, wearing earrings and a gold necklace, “as if just back from clubbing.”

 

Europe will probably spend weeks trying to figure out exactly what led to Thursday’s catastrophe. (Danish and Italian leaders have called for suspending Spain from Schengen, the free-movement zone that allows someone to travel from Córdoba to Copenhagen without passing through border control.) But one contributing factor is that the supreme court effectively directed migrants to choose life-threatening routes. People saw their shot, and took it. Spain has alleged that human traffickers were among these opportunists. Morocco has been blamed for encouraging the migrants, to cause trouble for Spain. However, the Moroccan king happened to be giving his Throne Day speech nearby in M’diq, and it would have been an odd choice to spring a disaster of this magnitude so close by.

 

Another possible factor is socioeconomic: the long-term trends in Morocco that make life there miserable and send young people into the sea in search of opportunity. The youth-unemployment rate in Morocco is roughly one-third, and years of drought have led to a farming bust.

 

This second factor needs scrutiny, however. The past 25 years have been, droughts aside, good for Morocco’s economy. Indeed, its shift away from agriculture and mining and toward modern industry has powered consistent growth, led by such sectors as automotive manufacturing and phosphate processing. Youth unemployment is high, but it’s not much better in Spain, where it is currently about 25 percent, down from a high of 55 percent in 2013. So the migration is from a poor country without jobs to a rich one without jobs. I, too, would prefer a rich one, but the faster-growing economy of Morocco and the not-exactly-healthy labor sector of Spain complicate the picture.

 

In none of the accounts I have read from journalists in Ceuta do the migrants claim to be refugees—that is, people who fear persecution if they return to their home country. Some Moroccans have protested government policies, and according to reports, at least some of the migrants are sub-Saharan; some of them may have a legitimate asylum claim. But most of the Moroccans seem to be economic migrants, moving away from a country with economic problems but no economic catastrophe. In that sense, they are rational people seeking a better life, as anyone would. Because Spain has officially given swimmers a pass, it is also rational for them to have chosen that route, if they thought they could make it.

 

Far-right Spanish leaders are calling the incident an “invasion,” and even Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has described it as an “attack.” What I think perturbs Spaniards, and not just those on the right, is the combination of so many migrants’ awareness of the rules—knowing exactly how they work, and acting upon that knowledge for personal advantage—and their brazen unwillingness to submit to those rules when they prove disadvantageous. The name of the Facebook group that coordinated migrants used the Arabic-dialect word hraga. It means “burners,” and refers to the common practice of destroying one’s identity documents upon arrival in the intended country, to thwart even lawful efforts to detain, track, and deport their bearer. This combination of being a stickler for the rules and trying to evade them will leave a bitter taste for many Europeans.

 

The strongest case for mass immigration has always been that some people have no home to go back to, and need help. But the events in Ceuta seem very far from this category. They will empower right-wing parties that see Ceuta and say: Not a millimeter closer.

Morocco Tests Spanish Sovereignty

By Joshua S. Treviño

Saturday, August 01, 2026

 

The seemingly abrupt crisis in the Spanish city of Ceuta, perched on the North African littoral athwart the Straits of Gibraltar, is at once both alarming in the moment and portentous for the future. That future involves not just Spain, but the entirety of the West — of which the United States is an intrinsic part.

 

At this writing, the fast-moving invasion of Ceuta — we should call it what it is — has seen an estimated sixty thousand young men erupt into the city of approximately eighty thousand residents. They are, for the most part, coming in via a low-lying entry near the Mediterranean shore, poorly secured and now wholly breached. Fifty-seven individuals have died, presumably claimed by the sea or exposure; the number will probably climb. Within Ceuta itself, there are scattered reports of confrontations between Spanish residents and the new neighbors who may shortly outnumber them. Whatever the state of the streets, and even if all sixty thousand migrants are shortly expelled, the message is sent: this Spanish city, populated by Spanish citizens and part of Spanish sovereign territory for the past four and a half centuries, is no longer fully defended and possessed by Spain.

 

As you read this, perhaps the immediate crisis is ended — but all this remains true.

 

The question arises as to who, exactly, possesses the power to override Spanish sovereignty in this fashion we have just witnessed. It is not “the migrants” who have arrived in a flood, and who possess no political identity unto themselves. It is those who positively directed them — that is to say, agents of the Moroccan state. This is empirically confirmed by various media outlets, including the New York Times, which reports that the invaders could have been transported and directed by those agents. Deniability here is a feature: There is no directive nor policy from Rabat encouraging illegal migration into Spain, yet the apparatus of the state, in its police and functionaries, all tend toward the same end.

 

What Morocco has done is comparable to what Americans saw in late 2021, when several thousand Haitians suddenly appeared on the north bank of the Rio Grande at Del Rio, Texas. There too we saw reports of local officialdom urging and even moving Haitians from points within Mexico to crossings into the United States. Whether achieved through quiet direction by the state’s own hierarchy, like Henry II asking to be rid of a troublesome priest, or by human-trafficking cartels that function as state proxies, the fundamental responsible party is the state. A state that cannot account for the rapid assembly and movement of sixty thousand people is not a state. Morocco is a state in full. The question now is whether Spain is as well.

 

Further informing the picture of likely Moroccan-state aggression is the record of coercive Moroccan irredentism since its 1956 independence. The following year saw Moroccan forces invade and besiege Spanish possessions at both Ifni and in the Spanish Sahara, resulting, by 1958, in a Spanish retreat that resulted in the full cession of a strip of the Sahara, and all of Ifni, by 1969. Morocco then invaded neighboring Algeria between 1963 and 1964 in a futile effort to annex some of its bordering territory — an effort that eventually drew in Cuban forces in one of their first combat deployments to Africa. Morocco then invaded the remaining Spanish Sahara in the so-called Green March of 1975, resulting in a wholesale Spanish handover of the territory and the inception of a low-grade war with many of the Sahrawis that continues to this day.

 

From the outset of all this, Morocco laid claim to the Spanish Plazas de Soberanía on the North African coast, including the populated cities of Ceuta and Melilla. In other words, the Moroccan political project has from the start been focused on what it perceives to be the completion of its full territorial control over Africa’s northwestern corner.

 

It was not until Moroccan forces attempted in 2002 to forcibly occupy one of the Plazas de Soberanía, the uninhabited Isla Perejil, not far off Ceuta, that Spain decisively pushed back against the thus-far one-way ratchet of Moroccan territorial acquisition from Spain. That seven-day episode was resolved bloodlessly when Spanish forces retook the island from its minuscule Moroccan garrison; however, Morocco has not relinquished any of its claims. Since then, the tactics have shifted, away from the naked-aggression approaches at Ifni in 1957, Tindouf in 1963, or Perejil in 2002 and toward the Green March model of 1975, in which unarmed populations with state backing and direction are mobilized to deluge the territory of competing sovereigns, and render that sovereignty null by their entry and presence. Prior to the ongoing Ceuta crisis, the most-recent example came in the 2021 crisis in the same city, in which the Moroccan state facilitated the entry of approximately eight thousand migrants. That, of course, was a minor prelude to what we see now.

 

Those familiar with hybrid warfare and its manifestations will recognize this situation for what it is: a form of warfare, in which the population as such is weaponized, and an invasion as certain as if it were carried out by a uniformed army. This characterization is not hyperbole. In the American context, and specifically in Article I, Section 10 of the United States Constitution, invasion is classically understood as requiring two elements: entry into a sovereign and enmity toward that sovereign. It is on this basis, for example, that various U.S. state governments, including Texas, have declared that the border crisis of the Biden years constituted an invasion. The federal government in President Trump’s second term has also characterized the same crisis as an invasion. The involvement of the sending state — in the U.S. case, the Mexican regime with its robust cartel ties, and in the Spanish case, the Kingdom of Morocco’s direct engagement — is central to the characterization. The Spanish legal and constitutional context is obviously different, but the principles of governance are fundamentally the same. The goal of the individual migrant may be a better life, enrichment, or something else, but the goal of the state sending him is the weakening of sovereignty and, in the Moroccan case, sovereignty’s eventual transfer.

 

To that end, the Moroccan state has been strategically consistent, directionally engaged, and operationally savvy for generations. The same cannot be said for Spanish political leadership, which has veered wildly from the sagacious to the positively malign across the past fifty years. To the extent that the wounded and theatrical regime of Pedro Sánchez, enmeshed in scandal and reliant upon separatists elsewhere in Spain for his own tenuous fingernail’s grasp upon power, represents an opportunity to press a weakened Spanish state for territorial concession, the Moroccans will take it. They see the political moment within Spain, and they also see the broader currents afflicting Europe. It is improbable that they are not aware that the European left, not least under Britain’s Labour regime, is presently eager to find overseas territories to concede. To that end, Spanish leadership ought to expect that this Ceuta crisis will be followed by offers, putatively friendly and constructive, to assist in the administration of Ceuta’s borders, and perhaps beyond. The concession here, which may solve a temporary budget or administrative problem for the Spanish government, will be merely the end of a wedge: In the fullness of time, de facto will become de jure.

 

Sánchez’s government, having succeeded in plunging Spain into diplomatic isolation — at this writing, the French are sending forces to the Pyrenees crossings, the Italians are suspending visa-free movement from Spain, and the communicative apparatus of both the United States and Israel are mostly jeering — cannot be counted upon to refuse such a gesture. Having failed to defend Spain’s national territory in a moment of profound crisis, it is unlikely to secure its integrity across the long run. This is the tragedy of Ceuta and Melilla, Spanish cities of nearly half a millennium, in that they may be lost by a government that is both unpopular and fleeting to one that is iron in its vision and its pursuit.

 

A competent Spanish regime would impose costs. We know the working template because we see it at work in the United States. Borders must be militarily secured, and internal defense must be a well-funded priority. Remittances to sending states, whether Mexico or Morocco, must be placed under direct threat. Visas, especially by governing elites and their families, must be visibly curtailed. Market access must be predicated upon security cooperation. Deportations must be prioritized, and sending states compelled to accept them. These are realities in the United States now, to a greater or lesser degree. They will not be in Spain so long as a government of the left persists (though a general election is coming within the year). More broadly, if the European project is to mean anything, the European Union ought to be imposing exactly the same costs upon an external power mounting an invasion of member-state territory. “The terrible ifs accumulate,” wrote Churchill, but they point toward sound policy if it is desired.

 

The European powers, including but not limited to Spain, are going to have to decide what precisely their non-European geographic possessions are, and what they are for. These enclaves are broadly regarded as colonial relics, but this is inaccurate and frequently unjust to their citizenry. Mayotte is French, the Falklands are British, Greenland is Danish, and Ceuta is Spanish: This being so, each of those states has a positive responsibility to retain the adequate defense by arms for their people and possessions. It is a choice as to which side of the Melian Dialogue a nation wishes to occupy. Spain has for the moment failed in this duty. The failure is not fatal, but it will be in time. It need not continue to fail. The Spanish government is unequal to its task: Spain the nation is not.

 

Finally, in this moment, statecraft comes to the fore beyond mere material calculus. In the great House of Commons debate of September 1939 on war or peace, Leo Amery exhorted his parliamentary colleague to “Speak for England!” Someone must speak for Spain, a kingdom of equal dignity, now. Spain’s prime minister will not. The king, who properly ought to fly to Ceuta to share in the suffering of his people, has at this writing yet to move.

 

Spain, immersed in over a thousand years of champions, needs another. The question is who.

 

 

Why Spain’s Immigrant Crisis Is Happening

By John Gustavsson

Saturday, August 01, 2026

 

In the span of 24 hours, around 60,000 immigrants crossed the border between Spain and Morocco, making their way into the Spanish exclave Ceuta (population 83,500). This is not the first such migration wave, but its size and speed are unprecedented. This mass arrival is the direct consequence of Spain bucking the European trend of restricting immigration, and it’s quickly turning Spain into a pariah in the European Union.

 

The most immediate cause behind this immigration tsunami is a ruling by the Spanish Supreme Court three weeks ago that restricted so-called hot returns, or turning immigrants away at the border. The greatest change is that everyone who arrived by swimming or by boat must have his case processed individually instead of being immediately turned away, a process that can take months to years. As in the United States, many disappear during the processing and are long gone by the time their applications have been rejected.

 

While this judicial activism no doubt played a role, the Spanish government, led by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, also helped cause this crisis. Earlier this year, the government announced amnesty for illegal aliens who fulfilled certain conditions (for example, long-term residence in Spain). It was expected that this amnesty would give legal status to 500,000 illegals. In the end, more than 1.1 million applied. While two-thirds were from Latin America, most of the rest came from Africa — including about 13 percent from Morocco.

 

The Spanish government has stressed that the amnesty applies only to those who were already in the country by January 1, 2026. Yet, it was always naïve to think that an amnesty of past illegal immigrants wouldn’t affect the behavior of future would-be immigrants.

 

Alas, while Pedro Sánchez bears a lot of blame, he was in a tight spot: After the 2023 election, his party stayed in government by cutting a deal with several Basque and Catalan separatist parties. These parties are generally pro-immigration and have little reason to be pragmatic: The more chaos there is in Spain, the more voters in their own region will support independence. Such a situation — a coalition government fashioned from parties with twisted incentives — was never going to end well. On top of this, Sánchez also relies on the support of the far-left populist Podemos party.

 

At the time, Sánchez justified the coalition as a “bulwark” against the “reactionary” right — in particular, the anti-immigration Vox party. Ironically, but not surprisingly, Vox was already reaching new heights in the polls even before this wave.

 

Finally, a third factor may be Morocco itself. Spain and Morocco cooperate on border control: While not explicitly quid pro quo, the unofficial arrangement is that Spain contributes aid to Morocco, and Morocco takes measures to stop people crossing into Ceuta. Either Morocco suddenly dropped the ball, and 60,000 people took the opportunity to cross at the same time, or this was a calculated move. A mere ten days before the wave began, Sánchez visited Algeria and spoke of closer ties. This was frowned upon by Morocco, since Algeria supports the independence of Western Sahara. After the 2015–16 refugee crisis, Turkey made a deal with the EU to stop immigrants from crossing into the European Union; then Turkey used the threat of creating another refugee crisis as leverage to blackmail the EU.

 

If that is indeed what Morocco is doing, it appears to be working. Rather than condemn Morocco for letting the human wave through, Spanish officials were quick to play nice, praising Morocco for its “exemplary” cooperation and stressing that many of those who arrived have already been turned away or have voluntarily returned home. Madrid is clearly not willing to secure the border on its own side — or perhaps it’s unable to given the political makeup of the governing coalition. While Spain could put pressure on Morocco by, for example, freezing aid and, more important, targeting remittances — total global remittances to Morocco make up about 7–8 percent of the country’s GDP — it looks increasingly likely that Spain will continue to play softball and rely on the goodwill of Morocco to do its dirty work.

 

This, however, is not playing well with the rest of the European Union. Within the EU, moves have been made to restrict immigration and facilitate easier return. The right-wing majority in the European Parliament came together earlier this year to pass a new Return Regulation, enabling more deportations. In Germany, which used to be a bastion of pro-immigration sentiment, Chancellor Friedrich Merz has spoken of remigrating 800,000 Syrians (80 percent of all Syrians living in Germany).

 

Spanish immigration policy may, at first glance, appear to be none of the business of the other member states. However, within the EU, all citizens have free movement. And within the Schengen Area — encompassing all of EU except Cyprus and Ireland — there are not even any border checkpoints, meaning that if you can make it to one of these 25 countries, you can easily move to any of the others without ever being asked to identify yourself.

 

In the wake of this migration crisis, Italy has already suspended free travel from Spain and is demanding that Spain be formally suspended from the Schengen Area. Finland and Austria have both echoed this demand, though they have so far not suspended free travel on their own accord. France is not going that far, but it has promised increased checks along the French-Spanish border. The European People’s Party, the largest group in the European Parliament, has called for action from Spain and said it will “demand answers” at the next plenary session.

 

While Spain deserves criticism, there is no getting away from the elephant in the room: Without border checkpoints between member states, it is enough for one country out of 27 to have an open-border policy, for all countries to effectively have open borders. Right now, Spain is Europe’s soft underbelly, but any border nation going down that path could have essentially the same effect. This is the fundamental flaw of the Schengen Area.

 

In 2015, Hungary became the pariah of the European Union when it built a fence to keep immigrants out. Now, Spain is well on its way to that status for letting them in. As Europe comes to terms with the immigration wave into Spain, it would do well to rethink its commitment to passport-free travel.