MADRID â For a third straight night, angry residents of the Spanish exclave of Ceuta took to the streets this week, trashing migrant encampments, blockading aid deliveries, and tangling with riot police in a furious backlash against a summer migrant surge that has left the city on edge.
What began as peaceful flag-waving protests on Wednesday escalated into violent confrontations by early Thursday, with hundreds of locals â who call themselves Caballas â charging police lines, burning tents and personal belongings on a beach camp, and forcing the Red Cross to abandon a food delivery under a hail of chants branding the humanitarian group a ‘mafia.’
A City at Boiling Point
The unrest, reported by Spanish outlets including El Mundo, El Español, and El Faro de Ceuta, stems from a sense of abandonment by Prime Minister Pedro SĂĄnchez’s socialist government as thousands of undocumented migrants â many still dwelling in the city following a late July border rush â continue to strain public services and fuel fears over security.
The immediate trigger for this week’s protests was a leaked plan from Madrid to use sports centers and other public facilities to ‘temporarily’ house migrants, a proposal that enraged locals who feel their neighborhoods have already paid the price for what they see as a lax immigration policy.
‘They’ve taken away our beaches, destroyed our schools, and now they want to give them the sports centers? Enough is enough,’ Alfonso, a protester identified by El Español, said during Wednesday’s march.
Protesters Confront Red Cross, Police Charge
On Thursday night, the simmering anger boiled over at Benitéz beach, less than a mile from the migrant camps that have become the focal point of the protests. Video footage shows residents standing in the path of a large Red Cross truck, with police forming a cordon between the locals and NGO workers. The standoff ended with the truck turning back, unable to deliver food to sustain the migrant encampment.
Chants captured on video included ‘the Red Cross is a mafia,’ a vulgar insult aimed at the prime minister, and ‘Ceuta will never be defeated.’ As the night progressed, police in riot gear charged the crowd, and several migrant tents and shelters were set ablaze, with personal belongings burned.
‘We have torn down everything, everything, look, we have torn it down,’ an unidentified man is heard saying in a clip shared on social media by El Faro de Ceuta.
Wednesday Night’s Tensions
The violence followed a tense Wednesday evening when a splinter group of 200 to 300 protesters descended on El TrampolĂn beach after a largely peaceful daytime march. Per El Español, the crowd shouted ‘out, invaders’ and ‘this is our beach’ while tearing down tents and throwing migrants’ belongings into the sea. Police intervened, placing themselves between the protesters and the main camp, managing to disperse the crowd.
Footage from the scene shows protesters clapping and hurling insults at rows of migrant tents. The chants also included ‘A Caballa never gives up’ and ‘Don’t look at us, join us’ as marchers passed through residential areas, before repeatedly shouting ‘invaders, expulsion.’ Another slogan â ‘Ceuta is not a CETI’ â drew a comparison to the country’s temporary migrant reception centers, known as CETIs.
‘No Turning Back’
Residents like Ăfrica CortĂ©s, a mother of two, told El Español she has never witnessed anything like this in the city. She said there is ‘no turning back’ and that civilian pressure will continue until ‘all migrants are expelled from Ceuta’ and the city ‘returns to normalcy.’
The Spanish government has attempted to scale back its plans â scaling down the proposal to use sports centers in response to the backlash â but the move has done little to soothe protesters’ anger, with many telling reporters they feel utterly let down by Madrid.
Military Vehicle Ambush
In a separate incident early Thursday, a Spanish military vehicle was ambushed in the small Ceuta settlement of BenzĂș by around 40 migrants who threw stones at it after it passed a stoplight and reached a control point. The soldiers abandoned the vehicle and fled on foot; at least four were injured. El Faro de Ceuta reported that twelve suspected attackers, all Moroccan nationals aged 35 to 40, were detained by police, some after jumping into the sea in escape attempts.
The protests show no sign of abating as locals vow to keep up the pressure until what they call the ‘invasion’ is reversed. The coming days are likely to test both the Spanish government’s resolve and the patience of a city that says it has reached its breaking point.
Source: www.breitbart.com â https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2026/08/28/watch-fed-up-spaniards-trash-invading-migrant-tents-at-ceuta-beach/