SPAIN has slapped border controls on every flight and ferry arriving from Italy, as the extraordinary diplomatic spat between Madrid and Rome over the Ceuta migrant crisis shows no sign of cooling off.
The measures came into force at midnight and will run for a month, with officers spot-checking the documents of five to ten per cent of arriving passengers before they are allowed off the plane.
It is Madrid’s answer to Giorgia Meloni’s government, who suspended the Schengen free movement agreement with Spain a week ago, in the fallout from the estimated 78,000 migrants who swam, scaled and stormed their way into the Spanish exclave from Morocco in a matter of days.
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Italy insists the checks are about stopping any of those migrants continuing their journey north into the EU.
Officials in Madrid dismissed the justification as built on “spurious arguments” with no basis in fact, pointing out the migrants who reached Ceuta had no conceivable route into the Schengen zone from there in the first place.
Spanish authorities feel this is in stark contrast to Italy’s own back-and-forth with Brussels just months ago, when the European Commission blocked Rome from suspending its EES border checks.
Italy and Spain do not share a land border.
On Friday, Spain gave Italy until Sunday to reverse course. Rome refused, saying its checks would stay until at least 15 August — the date Italian officials believe Spain “expects a new wave of migration” to hit Ceuta again.
Olive Press reporting has tracked a mystery social media campaign of nearly half a million anonymous accounts pushing for a repeat crossing on that exact day, with posts advertising swimming gear circulating in Facebook groups boasting over 100,000 members each.
Spain’s own prime ministerial office says it is monitoring the situation but doesn’t expect a repeat of last month’s scenes.
Passengers arriving into Madrid on Saturday told national broadcaster RTVE that every single person on their flight was made to show documents before disembarking. “They told us we couldn’t get off the plane without showing our documents,” said one traveller.
Over in Italy, El Pais has reported long queues at several airport terminals, with Spanish arrivals funnelled into a dedicated line — despite Rome’s insistence that EU citizens are exempt and only non-EU travellers face extra scrutiny.
It is the latest flashpoint in a crisis that has pitted Spain’s socialist PM Pedro Sanchez, who travelled to Ceuta himself to call the mass crossing “an attack” on Spain’s territorial integrity, against Meloni, long Europe’s loudest voice for tougher migration rules.
Sanchez has previously hit out at “selfish” EU allies for piling on rather than offering solidarity, after Finland and Denmark backed Italy’s move and the Czech Republic went further still, calling for Spain to be booted out of Schengen altogether.
Suspending Schengen isn’t unheard of — Italy already runs checks on its border with Slovenia — but doing it against a fellow member with no shared land border, over a crisis that unfolded a thousand miles away, is a different order entirely.
Most of the migrants who reached Ceuta were sent back within days, though the death toll from the crossing has climbed past 140, and nearly 1,400 unaccompanied minors are still in the enclave.
Spain’s Migration Commissioner has pointed the finger at criminal networks and disinformation campaigns rather than any deliberate Moroccan policy — though Spanish intelligence sources believe Rabat quietly let the crisis unfold rather than orchestrating it outright.
Morocco, for its part, blames Spain’s own Supreme Court, after a ruling stopped migrants intercepted while swimming from being automatically turned back — with one government source describing it as the moment “the dam gave way.”
With both sides dug in and 15 August looming, the only certainty for now is more queues at the airport — and no sign of who blinks first.
