Ceuta Police Turned Rubber Bullets Against Their Own Citizens Fighting to Retake Their Beach
Spanish riot police fired rubber bullets at their own citizens on a Ceuta beach this week.
Those citizens were only trying to clear an illegal migrant camp that has swallowed their beach since July.
Ceuta's own police force just picked the migrants' side in a fight over their own residents' beach.
Residents Tore Down Tents While Riot Police Guarded the Migrants
Hundreds of Ceuta residents marched out of the O'Donnell district toward El Trampolín beach on August 26.
More than 2,000 of them showed up.
Dozens pushed past the crowd to the migrant settlement and started pulling down tents with their bare hands.
Spanish officers responded by firing warning shots into the air and forming a human wall between Spanish citizens and the camp that has sat on their beach since July 30.
Police had already picked a side the day before, forming a line to protect a Red Cross truck that Spaniards tried to block from resupplying the camp.
By Wednesday night a harder core of 200 to 300 residents came back and finished the job, tearing down tents, throwing belongings into the sea and setting the debris on fire.
"We have tore down everything, everything, look, we have tore it down," one man told cameras as the flames went up.
Resident África Cortés put it simpler: there's "no turning back" until every migrant is gone.
A local named Alfonso summed up what weeks of occupation had cost his town: "They've taken away our beaches, destroyed our schools."
Once the fire burned out, residents grabbed rakes and brooms and cleaned the sand themselves.
The same morning, roughly 40 Moroccan migrants swarmed a Spanish military vehicle a few miles away in Benzú, pelting it with rocks and forcing the soldiers inside to bail out and run.
Four soldiers were hurt, and police have since arrested twelve of the attackers.
That's not a beach cleanup gone wrong.
That's an occupation with two fronts, and Madrid is losing both of them.
https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/2092927604894683450“>https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/2092927604894683450
Even Sánchez's Own Voters Say He Failed This Crisis
Roughly 70,000 migrants swam into Ceuta from Morocco over several days at the end of July, and at least 72 of them died trying.
Most were sent back to Morocco within days.
Thousands weren't, and they built a camp on the beach that Spain's Socialist government could never quite manage to clear.
Spain moved 1,200 of them into shelters on August 20.
Hundreds walked right back out within hours.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez skipped town for a vacation in the Canary Islands while it happened.
Ceuta residents are now demanding the resignation of Miguel Ángel Pérez Triano, the state's crisis delegate on the ground, and they are not alone in their disgust.
A Sigma Dos poll of more than 2,100 voters found 82.2 percent believe Sánchez's government failed to respond to the crisis.
That includes 56.9 percent of his own Socialist voters and 52.7 percent of voters from his coalition partner, Sumar.
Vox leader Santiago Abascal flew to Ceuta and called what happened there exactly what it was: "an invasion."
The same poll found 77.2 percent of Spaniards want every undocumented migrant deported, minors included, and 55 percent want the border militarized outright.
Sánchez's government is offering neither.
Morocco Has Used This Same Playbook On Spain Before
Rabat has run this exact play on Spain before.
In May 2021, Morocco loosened its border controls and let roughly 8,000 migrants swim into Ceuta within 48 hours as punishment for Spain treating a Western Sahara separatist leader in a Spanish hospital.
Spain deported most of them within two days, and Morocco tightened the border back up almost as fast as it had opened it.
This time the polling tells you what Spanish voters think is happening again: 90.4 percent believe Morocco engineered the surge, and nearly 60 percent call it deliberate blackmail against Madrid.
The difference is Madrid let this one run for a month instead of two days, then sent riot police to guard what was left of it.
It just told every resident of Ceuta exactly whose side it's on, and it isn't theirs.
Sources:
- Paul Serran, "Pushback: Fed-Up Spanish Citizens Charge Beach in Ceuta, Disperse the Invaders and Set Fire to Their Shacks, Clash With the Police," The Gateway Pundit, August 2026.
- Christian K. Caruzo and Oliver JJ Lane, "Watch – Spain Fights Back: Fed-Up Ceuta Locals Trash Migrant Camps," Breitbart, August 28, 2026.
- Kurt Zindulka, "8 in 10 Spanish Voters Think Socialist Gov't Failed in Ceuta Crisis," Breitbart, August 29, 2026.
- Antonio O'Mullony, "Spanish Police Shield Ceuta Migrant Camp From Residents," Brussels Signal, August 2026.
- Stephen Sorace, "At Least 72 Dead Amid Mass Migrant Rush to Storm Spanish Enclave of Ceuta Sparking Border Crisis," Fox News, August 2026.
