Ceuta's Fence Is the EU's Southernmost Land Border

Ceuta occupies 18.5 square kilometers on the Moroccan coast, directly across the Strait of Gibraltar from mainland Spain. Spain has held it since 1580, when Philip II unified the Iberian crowns. Morocco has claimed it as occupied territory since independence in 1956. The population of 85,000 is Spanish, and Ceuta is an autonomous city of Spain — which means it is, legally, European Union territory on the African continent.

The city is separated from Morocco by a double fence, originally built in the 1990s and reinforced several times since. Between the two fences runs a patrol road. Morocco and Spain share a border crossing at the north end of Ceuta: the Tarajal crossing, which handles both pedestrian and vehicle traffic and, in ordinary years, tens of thousands of cross-border workers per day — Moroccan citizens who live in the neighboring city of Tetouan and work in Ceuta.

In May 2021, approximately 8,000 people entered Ceuta in a single day by swimming or wading from the Moroccan side. The crossing came after Spain granted asylum to a Polisario Front leader, infuriating the Moroccan government, which briefly stopped enforcing the border. Spanish soldiers and police pushed most back the same day.

Melilla, on Morocco's Mediterranean coast 400 kilometers to the east, has the same legal status: a Spanish city in Africa, EU territory, a double fence. The two cities are the only land borders the European Union shares with Africa.