The president of the Autonomous City Ceuta, Juan Jesús Vivas, said on 11 September at the Palacio Autonómico that around 13,000 people were currently in Ceuta following the mass arrivals at the end of July. He also rejected calls for the city to accept a permanently higher reception quota as a “structural reality”. The Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez had recently pledged greater solidarity and distribution, which Vivas criticised as unrealistic for Ceuta.
Vivas presented a breakdown of the accommodation recorded by the city administration: in Loma Margarita there were around 1,300 people, around 320 at the Hípica and Loma Colmenar around 1,200. The camp at El Trampolín was the largest, with approximately 4,500 people. He counted a further 2,700 or so people in the areas of Tarajal, Alfonso and at the tented site in Luna Blanca. According to him, this was in addition to around 2,000 minors in municipal care and around 1,000 people at the Centro de Estancia Temporal de Inmigrantes (CETI). That brought the total to around 13,000.
Vivas said the CETI had a regular capacity of around 600 places, with an average of around 200 additional places for minors. That made for approximately 800 places in total. Given current occupancy, he described the municipal structures as overstretched. The figures he gave were based on ongoing administrative counts and accommodation lists; they could change at short notice because of the changing situation.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said in an interview on 9 September that the state would continue to support Ceuta. This included transfers of particularly vulnerable people to mainland Spain and distribution across the autonomous communities. However, there is no agreement on how a possible permanent quota would be designed. Vivas rejects models that would assign Ceuta a disproportionate share of arrivals.
According to official reports from recent weeks, border crossings into Ceuta since the end of July have totalled tens of thousands; authorities say a large proportion of the people were returned in coordination with Morocco. The exact number of people remaining in the city is disputed and depends on ongoing registrations as well as informal accommodation. Humanitarian organisations point to the difficult conditions in makeshift camps, while the city is calling for swift relief through transfers and additional state resources.
Editor: Mira Cadena (Article created with AI assistance).