Crisis in Ceuta: Has the Government of Pedro Sánchez reached the point of no return?

Although Pedro Sánchez and his Government have not yet crossed an institutional or electoral border that makes the end of their Government inevitable and a crisis does not dissolve a legislature, the question has ceased to be a rhetorical exaggeration.

The problem for Moncloa is no longer just what happened on July 30 and 31, when tens of thousands of people crossed the border from Morocco. It is what has happened since then: 26 days until activating a single command, figures that still do not fit, a city that feels overwhelmed, a public struggle between two State ministries and a partner like Junts willing to transfer the crisis to Congress.

Ceuta can continue to be an emergency that the State manages to channel. It can also be fixed in political memory as a test of loss of control. That second possibility, more than the projection of a specific seat, is what places the Government in its most dangerous phase.

The crisis is no longer measured at the border

The first consolidated assessments placed entries above 72,000 and returns to Morocco around 70,000. Subsequent updates have raised the estimate of arrivals to about 80,000 people. Almost a month later, there is not even a single public figure regarding the population that remains in the city.

The Executive has calculated that up to 5,000 people could need shelter - about 2,500 minors and just as many potential asylum seekers. Juan Jesús Vivas, on the other hand, claims that around 10,000 remain, in addition to those who already lived in an irregular situation.

Vivas states that this population amounts to about 15% of the residents of the city and has summarized the situation with a very untechnical image, but politically effective: "Ceuta is in the ICU." The return to classrooms narrows the accommodation alternatives, the Ceuta government rejects the occupation of its sports centers and hundreds of neighbors have mobilized against the use of new facilities this very afternoon, in a climate of tension.

The local pressure is real. The latest assessment from the Center for Coordination of Alerts and Health Emergencies considers the risk of infection transmission for the Ceuta population to be low and moderate for migrants, especially due to overcrowding and life on the street.

The single command is a solution and a rectification

The Council of Ministers has declared for the first time a "situation of interest for national security" and has placed Ángel Víctor Torres at the head of a functional authority. In the new body will be the Autonomous City, the Government Delegation, the involved ministries, the CNI, and the National Security Department. Moncloa has also announced that it will extraordinarily expand the socioeconomic plan for Ceuta.

The decision certifies in political terms that the previous coordination model was not enough. Vivas had been demanding that command for weeks, and the Executive activates it when the most acute phase of the entries has already passed, not before it occurred.

The Government accompanies the shift with 25 million extraordinary for the care of minors and with a draft bill to adapt the asylum and immigration laws to the European pact. A legislative reform will need months and does not eliminate the obligation to individually study each return, protection request, or file of a minor.

Crisis policy is not judged only by the amount of resources mobilized. The later authority is concentrated, the easier it is for a necessary correction to be read as recognition that the Government lost several weeks.

Robles and Marlaska turn the delay into a credibility crisis

The appearance of Margarita Robles has changed the debate. Until now, it was discussed whether the Executive had reacted quickly enough. Since this Tuesday, the focus has also returned to what was known, who received the information, and why two ministers offer different versions. The Government Delegation in Ceuta has also joined the clash between ministers supporting Marlaska's version late Tuesday.

Robles explained that the CNI agents stationed in Ceuta verbally warned the Government Delegation on July 29 of a call to try to enter the next day, coinciding with a Moroccan holiday. Fernando Grande-Marlaska has insisted that "there was no report" that anticipated an entry of the dimension that ultimately occurred. The Minister of Defense has also admitted the delay and has apologized: "If we arrived late, we arrived late."

Although there may be a technical compatibility between the two statements and a notice about a call does not equate to a precise forecast of 80,000 politically, however, it is beginning to be noted that this distinction does not solve the problem. If there was a signal, the Government is starting to feel increasing pressure to explain how it was evaluated. If it did not allow anticipating the magnitude, it must show what failed in the alert chain. And if the ministers disagree only on the meaning of the word "report," Moncloa needs a common version before the nuance seems like a pretext, especially if the Ceuta Government Delegation joins the chorus.

Credibility was already damaged. Vivas recounted that Sánchez proposed to him on July 31 a joint appearance to symbolically close the crisis. The Ceuta president refused because he wanted to talk about Morocco and the causes of the episode. According to his account, Sánchez also assured him that Marlaska would remain in the city until achieving "absolute normality"; the minister left the next day.

The true point of no return is a crisis of competence

In politics, the point of no return for a Government cannot be dated with a bad cover or with a photograph of voting intention. It arrives when an episode permanently modifies the judgment that citizens make about its ability to govern.

Several investigations demonstrate that the effect on votes of a crisis of this magnitude is given by the poor management of the crisis and not so much by the political narrative. That is to say, in polls that do not recover a few months before general elections, it will be necessary to look at those that start to come out if voters, as political science shows, punish above all the quality they attribute to the management, rather than the original responsibility of the Executive in the severity of the disaster. In other words: Sánchez may convince many citizens that Morocco, social networks, or mafias caused the avalanche and, even so, be penalized if they believe that the State prevented it poorly, reacted late, or has not managed its consequences.

Robles' self-criticism may serve the Government more than a closed defense of all actions. Admitting a mistake offers a point from which to repair. The problem is that this apology comes while Interior maintains that everyone acted correctly.

What the polls say and, above all, what they do not say

The most delicate demographic data for Sánchez is not the estimate of seats. It is the assessment of his management. In the survey by SocioMétrica conducted on August 5 and 6 and published by El Español, only 20.2% approved of the president's response and 74% disapproved. Among those who declared having voted for the PSOE, 38.3% rated his performance poorly. Vivas, by contrast, received the support of 75.2% of the interviewees.

This contrast indicates that a considerable part of public opinion attributes the local response to Vivas and the insufficiency of the national response to Sánchez. Furthermore, 80.6% of socialist voters demanded an immediate appearance by the president. The Government has already promised that it will go to Congress, but it has not yet set a date.

Electoral estimates paint a very bad scenario for the investiture bloc. SocioMétrica placed the PP at 33.8% and 149 seats, the PSOE at 26% and 103, and Vox at 17% and 57 deputies. NC Report estimated the PP at 34.2% and between 145 and 147 seats, the PSOE at 25.2% and between 101 and 103, and Vox at 18% and between 61 and 63. In both cases, the PP and Vox would comfortably exceed the absolute majority in the first polls just after the migration crisis.

Although the right already started with a structural advantage and the first measurements after the avalanche did not detect a new socialist collapse, it remains to be seen how the narrative 'lands' after a month of delays, clashes in the Government, and tension.

Ceuta brings the crisis to the parliamentary majority

Immigration and border control are particularly uncomfortable issues for a progressive coalition. If the Government hardens its discourse and accelerates returns, it strains Sumar and part of its electorate. If it prioritizes reception without offering visible results in Ceuta, it leaves the security ground to the PP and Vox. And if it distributes minors among communities, it turns the humanitarian emergency into a territorial negotiation.

Junts has already warned that it will not give "a single vote" to the Government if Catalonia is not excluded from the distribution of minors arriving in Ceuta. The threat is a new test of resistance on the parliamentary majority.

The electoral literature also explains why the passage of time harms Moncloa. When immigration dominates the agenda, the parties that have been appropriating the issue for years have an advantage. The Government not only competes to offer solutions: it competes in a framework -border, authority, control- that PP and Vox can impose if normality does not return soon.

Morocco prevents closing the external front

The crisis does not end in Ceuta either. This Tuesday, during a ceremony presided over by Mohamed VI, the Moroccan Minister of Religious Affairs, Ahmed Toufiq, evoked the liberation of "occupied cities" in a historical allusion to Ceuta and Melilla. The Spanish Government responded that both cities are Spain and are part of the southern border of Europe.

The Moroccan formulation remains making it impossible for Moncloa to treat the bilateral relationship as if nothing had happened. In another survey by SocioMétrica, also in El Español, 89% of respondents -including 85% of socialist voters- believed that Morocco had allowed or encouraged the entries. It is a perception, not proof of authorship, but politically it puts unbearable pressure on the Government to point to Morocco, something it has avoided doing on all occasions.

The more the Executive avoids verbalizing the conflict, the more space it leaves for the opposition to present cooperation as subordination; the more it raises the tone, the more it risks a Moroccan response that re-tensions the border.

"Another crisis that Pedro Sánchez resolves"

The crisis, moreover, has developed in an August that has been nothing positive in terms of political communication for the socialists, who have managed to overshadow the crisis in Madrid due to the purchase and sale of a penthouse in Chamberí by the Government of Díaz Ayuso. It is in Oscar Puente, the most digital of Sánchez's ministers, where the delicacy of Pedro Sánchez's moment has been most evident, both for succumbing to the temptation to declare the Ceuta crisis closed too soon and for opening the debate about his succession, although Puente later downplayed the headlines. It is worth remembering that, without a doubt, Óscar Puente is one of the ministers who has always defended the president most forcefully.

On August 1, after Marlaska assured that the Government had "reversed the situation in 24 hours," Puente posted on X: "Another crisis that Pedro Sánchez resolves."

Another crisis that Pedro Sánchez resolves.

— Óscar Puente (@oscar_puente_) August 1, 2026

The phrase of the 24 hours was from Interior, not from the Minister of Transport, but Puente assumed and amplified that political conclusion twenty-four days later, Ceuta continues under extraordinary pressure, the Government has had to create a single command, has declared for the first time a situation of interest for national security and its ministers still disagree on the warnings from the CNI.

Puente also opened another important can of worms this weekend, placing the eventual replacement of Sánchez at the end of the next legislature, in four or five years and he has not been ruled out as a possible candidate when that moment arrives. He has done so while defining the president as the best possible leader and the "Michael Jordan" of the PSOE.

Although they are still reflections of the minister himself, who in the second case has also been careful to clarify, it is true that both evinced a certain communication crisis in the political narrative of Moncloa, trying to close a crisis that had just begun to unfold its consequences and now starting at a bad moment an attempt to sketch the future of the PSOE when Sánchez is still struggling to regain control of the present in Ceuta.

Has Ceuta slipped out of Sánchez's hands?

The political time has slipped out of his hands. The Government allowed Vivas to set the narrative of abandonment, took almost a month to centralize coordination and now must explain why Defense and Interior do not describe the prior warnings in the same way. It has also lost the monopoly on closing the crisis: Ceuta, Morocco, Vivas, the opposition, the partners, the United States, and the very streets of the city can reopen it every day.

The next two or three weeks will decide whether Ceuta becomes a serious episode or a lasting symbol that starts the clock on the general elections, especially if, as some voices fear, Morocco continues to escalate its verbal claim to the territoriality of Ceuta and Melilla, neighborhood tensions continue, or normal management is not returned to the territory. And even worse, if the scenario of massive illegal entries is repeated, something that would politically shock the Government of Spain. Although the majority of those who entered returned to Morocco, there is already a single authority, Brussels is studying the Spanish request for emergency aid, and the Government retains legal, budgetary, and diplomatic instruments, the idea that the end of the legislature may depend on Ceuta is there.