The invasion of the Spanish city of Ceuta by tens of thousands of young, marauding Moroccans is, like Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, a tale of how the future could look unless one takes action in the present.
It’s also a temptation to succumb to schadenfreude. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez harbors a special enmity toward Israel and never misses an opportunity to lecture the United States on its policies. The invasion of Ceuta late last week was, without a doubt, his just desserts.
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But while we should definitely heed the lessons of the ghost of immigration future that Ceuta offers, and never again imitate former President Joe Biden and open the border to another invasion, and while Sanchez deserves the blame for what happened in Ceuta, we should resist censuring Spain or thinking it got what it deserved, or, worse yet, suggest that Ceuta is not Spanish.
First, let’s see how the actions and words of the Spanish government led to the surge of Moroccans into Ceuta on Thursday, July 30.
Last year, Sanchez announced he would offer an amnesty to an estimated 1 million immigrants residing in Spain illegally, which could easily have been a contributing factor that convinced over 70,000 Moroccans to invade Ceuta, which is on the coast of Africa, and borders Morocco.
Sanchez’s minister of equality until 2023, Irene Montero, said at a public rally soon after the amnesty was announced that she wanted to replace conservative Spaniards with foreign-born voters who would vote for her Marxist Podemos Party.
Additionally, the surge occurred after a recent Spanish Supreme Court ruling that migrants arriving by sea, unlike those crossing land or breaching border fences, could not be deported without due process. A flurry of posts on Moroccan social media platforms discussed the court decision just prior to the invasion.
Sanchez blamed human trafficking organizations for spreading the message on social media about the ruling and encouraging Moroccans to cross into Spain. According to estimates by Spain’s Interior Ministry released Tuesday, a total of 72,000 invaders crossed into Ceuta. The Ministry says some 70,000 have already returned to Morocco, but that figure is disputed.
But Sanchez clearly has a lot to answer for, and here is where the schadenfreude comes in. He is a very leftist leader, the furthest left in all of NATO, and he has repeatedly picked fights with the Trump administration and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
At the 2025 NATO summit, for example, Sanchez rejected President Donald Trump’s demand that all NATO members spend 5% of their GDP on defense. Sanchez called the move “incompatible with our world view” and has continued to criticize other aspects of Trump’s foreign policy, including U.S. military actions against Venezuela and Iran.
In January, Sanchez joined Brazil, Colombia, Uruguay, and Mexico in a joint statement condemning the U.S. capture of former Venezuelan dictator Nicholas Maduro, while other leaders in Europe, including the leaders of Germany and France, praised the operation.
Additionally, when the U.S. launched Operation Epic Fury against Iran on Feb. 28, Sanchez called the strikes “illegal and unjustifiable” and immediately moved to ban the U.S. from using the jointly controlled Rota and Moron military bases in Spain.
Sanchez has also harshly criticized Israel. After the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas, he immediately pledged that Spain would stop selling arms to Israel. Since then, Sanchez has recognized Palestinian statehood and, in a 2025 speech to the Spanish Parliament, labeled Israel a “genocidal state,” becoming the highest-ranking European leader to use those words to describe the Jewish state.
Also in 2025, Spain joined other countries, including South Africa, in an International Criminal Court filing against Israel for its military actions in Gaza.
But one of the problems with schadenfreude, a German concept describing the joy one feels at the suffering of others, is that, as with most vices, once we yield to it, it can take us places we never intended to go.
In this case, for many people, that schadenfreude has expanded to encompass all of Spain, rather than just Sanchez — but Spain and Sanchez are not the same thing.
Sanchez, who’s besieged with corruption accusations, does not represent the Spanish people, as he does not even have a majority in Parliament. In the last general elections in 2023, his Partido Socialista Obrero Espanol won just 121 seats out of 350 in the lower house of Parliament, the Congress of Deputies, and 91 out of 266 in the Senate.
In both cases, the PSOE fell well behind the leading opposition Partido Popular. But the center-right PP was unable to win an outright majority in Congress, even in coalition with the conservative Vox Party. Sanchez cobbled together a minority government with the Marxist Sumar, and remains in power with support from a Frankenstein coalition of parties that includes communists, separatists, supporters of Basque terrorists, and parties that would rid Spain of its royal family.
The PP and Vox are poised to win more than 200 seats in the 350-seat Parliament in elections next year, according to polls, and will undoubtedly lead a more pro-American foreign policy.
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If we attack the Spanish people, or spread the lie that the U.S. House of Representatives voted on a bill that says that Ceuta and another Spanish city on the African coast, Melilla, are not truly Spanish — as some are now doing on social media — then we will turn the PP and Vox voters against Trump and the U.S., making it hard for conservative leaders to support U.S. policies.
It is better to absorb the lessons of Ceuta than to vilify a NATO ally. Spain is not Sanchez.