Ceuta after the avalanche: hundreds of minors await a response

Currently, the transfers of unaccompanied migrant minors between autonomous communities rely on a dual mechanism: on one hand, the parliamentary approval of the state legal framework (royal decree-law and its subsequent development); on the other, an individualized administrative procedure that culminates in the resolution of placement and the effective transfer of the minor. The entire scheme originates from Royal Decree-law 2/2025, ratified by the Congress, and is specified in royal decrees such as 743/2025, 658/2025, and more recently, 556/2026.

1. Parliamentary procedures: from the Government to Congress

1.1. Royal Decree-law 2/2025 and reform of the Immigration Law

The cornerstone of the transfer system is Royal Decree-law 2/2025, dated March 18, which modifies Organic Law 4/2000 (Immigration Law) to introduce articles 35 bis, ter, quáter, and quinquies and new additional provisions on unaccompanied foreign minors. The Plenary of Congress ratified this royal decree-law on April 10, 2025, with 179 votes in favor and 170 against, and also agreed to process it as a bill by urgency, according to the official note from Congress (Congress note) and the report from Demócrata.

As another piece from Fren responde recalls, the Constitution requires that every royal decree-law be submitted to ratification or repeal by Congress within a maximum period of 30 days. Once ratified by a simple majority, the Chamber may decide to process it as a bill to introduce amendments, without interrupting its validity.

1.2. Key parliamentary content

According to the Congress note and information from Demócrata, the reform:

• Defines the “extraordinary migratory contingency” (art. 35 bis): declared when a territory exceeds 300% of its ordinary reception capacity.
• Entrusts the Sectoral Conference on Childhood and Adolescence to agree on declaration requirements, response plan, and application criteria; if there is no unanimity, the law’s provisions apply.
• Sets objective criteria for distribution (population, per capita income, unemployment, prior effort, structural places, insularity, border character, etc.).
• Orders that the placement and transfer resolution be issued within a maximum of 15 calendar days from registration in the Registry of Unaccompanied Foreign Minors.
• Creates a fund of 100 million euros to compensate autonomous communities and cities for costs derived from overcrowding.

2. Executive regulatory procedures

2.1. Capacity calculation and distribution

Royal Decree-law 2/2025 itself orders the development by royal decree of the “ordinary capacity” of each territory. This materializes in Royal Decree 743/2025, which approves the ordinary capacity of the autonomous protection systems, broken down by autonomous community and city, and published in the BOE (Royal Decree 743/2025). Subsequently, this capacity has been updated by Royal Decree 556/2026, explained by Demócrata, which sets 17,081 ordinary places across Spain and specifies how many correspond to each territory.

In parallel, another royal decree (658/2025, cited in several reports) develops the relocation and transfer procedure provided in article 35 quáter: deadlines, competent bodies, and relation with the Public Prosecutor’s Office.

3. Administrative procedures for each transfer

3.1. Declaration of contingency and case selection

According to the report from Demócrata, the procedure starts when the Minister of Youth and Childhood declares the extraordinary migratory contingency (for example, in the Canary Islands, Ceuta, and Melilla) after verifying that they exceed three times their ordinary capacity calculated with RD 743/2025/556/2026. From there:

• The community in contingency identifies potentially transferable minors and prepares an individualized social report.
• A personal interview is conducted with the minor to assess family ties, preferences, and specific needs.

3.2. File instruction and guarantees

According to the protocol described by Demócrata:

• The Government Subdelegation of the province where the minor is located requests a complete report (protection measures, family in Spain, etc.) from the community in contingency.
• With this material, an official placement proposal is formulated and the file is sent to the minor and the destination community, who have 3 calendar days to make allegations.
• The file goes to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, which has 2 days to express its opinion.
• The Subdelegation submits a resolution proposal to the Government Delegation in the community in contingency, which issues the placement resolution and notifies the departure and receiving communities and the minor. This resolution may be challenged by administrative appeal within one month.

3.3. Execution of the transfer

Once the resolution is notified:

• The community in contingency assumes the organization of the physical transfer and must execute it within a maximum of 5 days, informing of the date, time, and place of arrival.
• If the destination community refuses to receive the minor at the fixed point and time, the royal decree allows accompanying professionals to request support from the Security Forces and Corps, who will place the minor at the disposal of the public protection entity of the destination community and notify the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
• The total deadline to complete the transfer cannot exceed 15 calendar days from the minor’s registration in the Registry of Unaccompanied Foreign Minors.

In summary, transfers rest on a legal reform approved by royal decree-law and ratified in Congress, developed by several royal decrees that set capacity and procedure, and are applied through individualized administrative files with the intervention of Government Delegations and Subdelegations, autonomous communities, and the Juvenile Prosecutor’s Office, always under the principle of the best interest of the minor.

According to the Statute of Autonomy, the city of Ceuta does have powers in social assistance and protection of minors, but the text does not recognize or define a specific figure of “vice president” with its own functions in this area. The management of the protection of minors — including migrant minors — is a competence of the City exercised through the President and the Government Council, and only reaches a vice president if delegated or internally organized as such. Furthermore, the state transfer regulations specify that Ceuta assumes the protection and guardianship of minors, but do not distinguish based on nationality or migratory status.

1. What the Statute of Autonomy says about competencies on minors

The Statute of Autonomy of Ceuta (Organic Law 1/1995) does not expressly mention “migrant minors” nor “unaccompanied foreign minors.” What it does is attribute to the City a generic competence in social assistance, within the list of matters over which Ceuta may exercise powers:

• Article 21.1.18: recognizes the City’s competence in “social assistance.”
• Article 21.2: clarifies that, regarding these matters, Ceuta’s competence includes “the powers of administration, inspection, and sanction and, under the terms established by the general State legislation, the exercise of regulatory normative power.”

Protection and guardianship of minors is integrated into that social assistance competence, but the details of what exactly it entails are developed through state transfer regulations, not in the Statute itself.

2. Development of those competencies: protection of minors

The specific content of Ceuta’s competence in social assistance is set in Royal Decree 30/1999, of January 15, which transfers functions and services from the State Administration to the City of Ceuta “in social assistance matters,” in application of article 21.1.18 of the Statute.

The annex of this Royal Decree specifies that Ceuta assumes, among others, the following functions:

• Protection and guardianship of minors, in accordance with the Civil Code and Organic Law 1/1996 on legal protection of minors.
• Execution of measures ordered by juvenile courts, including functions of “direction, inspection, supervision, promotion, encouragement, and coordination of organizations, services, and centers for protection and reform of minors.”

These competencies refer to all minors in Ceuta’s territory, so in practice they also cover minors of foreign origin or in migration situations. The Royal Decree does not distinguish by nationality, but by the status of minor needing protection.

Additionally, reference is made to the general transfer framework established by Royal Decree 1411/1995, which regulates how State services are transferred to the City of Ceuta.

3. Institutional organization: President and Government Council

Organically, the Statute configures the City’s governing bodies as:

• The Assembly of Ceuta, representative body.
• The President of the City, who “presides over the Assembly, the Government Council, whose activity he directs and coordinates, and holds the supreme representation of the City.”
• The Government Council, “collegiate body that holds the executive and administrative functions of the city of Ceuta.”

The Government Council is responsible for “the direction of the city’s policy and the exercise of the corresponding executive and administrative functions,” including, therefore, the execution of social assistance policies and protection of minors assumed by Ceuta.

4. The figure of the vice president in the Statute

The Statute only mentions “Vice Presidents” in relation to the Assembly’s Board (two vice presidents of the Assembly, elected among deputies), but does not create or regulate a Vice Presidency of the Government Council with its own functions. Nor does it attribute specific material competencies (such as minors, immigration, or social services) to a vice presidency.

Consequently:

• The Statute does not directly grant the vice president of Ceuta specific competencies in protection of minors, migrant or not.
• Any vice presidency of the City Government and its competencies derive from the internal organization approved by the City itself (structure decrees, distribution of ministries, delegations from the President…), not from the Statute.

5. Conclusion: real scope of the functions of a vice president in this area

Strictly statutorily, the city of Ceuta has competence in social assistance and protection of minors, defined and developed by the Statute and by Royal Decree 30/1999. However, the Statute does not assign these functions to a specific “vice president” nor contemplate a vice presidency as a body with its own material competencies.

Therefore, the vice president currently assuming the areas of minors or migration exercises: (1) the competencies that the City Government is attributed by the Statute in social assistance and protection of minors, as transferred by the State; and (2) the functions delegated by the President or assigned by the organizational rules of the Government Council. These sources are organic and regulatory, not statutory.

The transfer of an unaccompanied migrant minor (MENA) from one autonomous community to another today requires combining three major blocks of guarantees: that the measure respects the best interest of the minor and their right to be heard (Organic Law on the protection of minors), that it complies with the specific regime for unaccompanied foreign minors of Organic Law 4/2000, and that it is articulated through mechanisms of coordination between communities and the General State Administration, including those provided for “extraordinary migratory contingency” situations. Additionally, in scheduled transfers such as those from Ceuta in 2021, the consent of the minor documented is expressly required.

1. General framework for the protection of the minor

Transversally, every transfer decision must respect Organic Law 1/1996 on Legal Protection of Minors, amended by Organic Law 8/2015 and complemented by Organic Law 8/2021 on protection against violence:

• Best interest of the minor as the primary criterion in any measure affecting them, including decisions on change of resource or territory (Organic Law 1/1996).
• Right to be heard and listened to in any administrative or judicial procedure affecting them, preferentially and with understandable information; from age 12, sufficient maturity is presumed.
• Obligation to justify decisions, weighing stability, effects of environment change, and preparation for transition to adult life.
• Strengthening guarantees against any form of violence, including institutional, by Organic Law 8/2021 (Organic Law 8/2021).

These guarantees also apply to unaccompanied foreign minors; immigration regulations cannot reduce this level of protection.

2. Specific regime for unaccompanied foreign minors (LO 4/2000)

Organic Law 4/2000 specifically regulates the situation of unaccompanied foreign minors. In the relevant section of the text, several key elements are established:

• Once it is determined that the person is a minor, the Public Prosecutor places them at the disposal of the minor protection services of the autonomous community where they are located, which assume their guardianship in a situation of abandonment.
• It is expressly foreseen that autonomous communities may reach agreements among themselves to assume guardianship and custody of unaccompanied foreign minors, “in order to guarantee minors better integration conditions.” That is, ordinary transfer to another community requires an inter-autonomic agreement on assumption of guardianship/custody.
• The General State Administration and autonomous communities may sign agreements with social entities for guardianship, which must indicate the number of minors, place of residence, and resources allocated; the competent court is determined by the place where the minor will reside, linking the transfer decision with a new judicial reference point.

Added to this are the newly introduced provisions on “extraordinary migratory contingency” for unaccompanied migrant children. LO 4/2000 itself, after its reform by Royal Decree-law 2/2025, establishes that:

• The Sectoral Conference on Childhood and Adolescence may unanimously approve a model and a Solidarity Response Plan with criteria to determine when to order inter-autonomic transfers and how to distribute places.
• A contingency situation is declared when the protection system of an autonomous community or city exceeds three times its ordinary capacity, enabling mandatory transfer mechanisms.
• In that scenario, the competent body of the General State Administration determines the destination community and the minor must be transferred within a maximum of fifteen calendar days from registration in the Registry of Unaccompanied Foreign Minors.
• The management model sets objective criteria for distribution among territories (population, disposable income, unemployment, prior effort in MENA care, available reception places, etc.).

In these transfers, although the administrative decision of placement and transfer corresponds to the State and is based on distribution criteria, the best interest of the minor, their right to be heard, and the guarantees of any protection measure remain applicable.

3. Scheduled transfers and minor’s consent: the example of Ceuta

Royal Decree 881/2021, on subsidies for reception in other communities of unaccompanied migrant children and adolescents from Ceuta, details operational requirements illustrating how a transfer program should be articulated:

• The purpose of the royal decree is to finance expenses of transfer from Ceuta and reception in the destination autonomous community, complying with LO 1/1996, LO 4/2000, and its Regulation (Royal Decree 881/2021).
• Ceuta and receiving communities are required to send a nominal list of transferred minors with destination center, arrival date, etc., reflecting the requirement for traceability and control.
• Key for your question: Ceuta must prepare an act of consent from the minor to their transfer. That is, beyond institutional agreement between administrations, the informed consent of the minor is documented.
• Destination communities must report dropouts and facilitate, in case of escape or abandonment, the return to the assigned destination community, reinforcing continuity of the protection itinerary.

4. Summary of legal requirements

Overall, for the transfer of a MENA to another community to be legally respectful, at least these conditions must be met:

• There is a competence and coordination basis: bilateral agreement on assumption of guardianship between communities (via LO 4/2000) or, in extraordinary situations, placement decided by the State according to the contingency model approved in the Sectoral Conference.
• The measure is motivated by the best interest of the minor, considering stability, educational and social resources, and this motivation is recorded in the corresponding administrative resolution.
• The minor is heard and their position documented; in programs like Ceuta’s, an act of consent is expressly required.
• The protection framework of LO 1/1996 and LO 8/2021 is respected (no regression of rights, guarantees against violence, possibility of decision review).
• There is effective coordination between the origin community, the destination community, and the General State Administration, including registration and updating in the Registry of Unaccompanied Foreign Minors.