Cheering crowds waving Spanish flags filled Ceuta on Tuesday as King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia made a diplomatically sensitive visit to the city following July's migrant influx from Morocco. Their trip is the first royal visit since 2007, when a diplomatic crisis erupted with neighbouring Morocco, which claims sovereignty over Ceuta and Spain's other North African territory of Melilla. To display this content from YouTube, you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement.
One of your browser extensions seems to be blocking the video player from loading. To watch this content, you may need to disable it on this site. Cover image: Los reyes de España, Felipe y Letizia, junto a las infantas Leonor y Sofía, asisten a un desfile militar con motivo de la Fiesta Nacional del país en Madrid, España, el 12 de octubre de 2026. © /Alejandro Martínez Vélez More than 70,000 migrants streamed into the small city of around 80,000 inhabitants in an unprecedented surge on July 30-31.
Most returned to Morocco in the following hours, but thousands have remained for weeks in often dire conditions, sleeping rough in the streets or on the beach. The crisis has angered locals and damaged Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez before a November 29 general election in which migration will feature prominently. Felipe and Letizia greeted the well-wishers who thronged the streets, stopping to shake hands and exchange words with them en route to the city hall to meet local authorities.
Read more‘We won’t go back’: Young Moroccan migrants in Ceuta refuse to abandon their European dream People raised their phones to take pictures of the royal couple, while some wore T-shirts bearing the slogan "Ceuta is not for sale. Cristina Carrasco, a 50-year-old civil servant who waited all morning to see the royals, told "it was a pleasure and a source of pride" to have shaken hands with Felipe. "We all told him, 'don't forget us,' and he said, 'no, we won't forget you,'" recounted Carrasco, who felt "grateful and proud" about a visit that "we deserved".
People wait for the arrival of Spain's King Felipe and Queen Letizia on October 13, 2026. © Pedro Nunes, Retiree Silvia Salmeron, 71, said the visit "was a breath of fresh air. At the city hall, Ceuta's leader Juan Jesus Vivas thanked Felipe and Letizia for coming in "the most difficult moment of our recent history". Ceuta is "a pressure cooker that could explode at any time", he said.
The authorities have set up thousands of places in temporary shelters and cleared the main camps on the beaches, but some migrants continue to live on the surrounding hills and the streets. Read moreLast Ceuta migrant camp removed ahead of Spanish king's visit Ana Maria Diaz, a 69-year-old pensioner, said the king should have come earlier to see the makeshift migrant encampments and visit the outlying areas of Ceuta where they concentrate. "You don't see it here but if you go to the outlying neighbourhoods... it's terrible," Diaz, who was holding a Spanish flag, told AFP.
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