Events have continued to unfold rapidly in the Spanish city of Ceuta as 60,000 Moroccans flooded into it over the last two days; the city’s population is around 87,000, so this was a significant, sudden increase in population.
On August 1, the far right parties of Núcleo Nacional and Alvise Pérez’s Se Acabó la Fiesta had planned a rally at at six in the afternoon in the Plaza de los Reyes, claiming a “reconquista” (reconquest) of Ceuta, reported El Faro Ceuta.
However, thousands of residents counter-mobilized, chanting “¡Alvise Pérez, fuera de Ceuta!” and “¡Ceuta unida y no dividida!” Alvise and agitator Vito Quiles had to be escorted by the police the entire time they were there; in the evening, they were heckled in a bar and evacuated by police van.
The next day, Santiago Abascal, the leader of the far-right Vox party, held a press conference, in Plaza de África in Ceuta. His nearly 50 supporters were outnumbered by the journalists, reported Ceuta TV. He did his best to provoke violence, by claiming that the influx of the thousands of immigrants was “a brutal attack on our sovereignty and the security of Spaniards,” and that it represented an “act of war” by Morocco.
