“Vamos a Spania” (Let’s go to Spain) became a viral slogan on social media last week. There were 1.3 million views of a video explaining in darija —Moroccan Arabic dialect— the recent Spanish Supreme Court decision limiting the government’s ability to push migrants back at the border. Messaging groups circulated the following statement: “Anyone who wants to migrate to Ceuta, send a direct message.”
The call to storm the border between Morocco and the tiny Spanish territory spread “like wildfire” between Wednesday and Thursday, official statements from the governments of Rabat and Madrid agreed, without naming any actors beyond the “mafias that traffic in human beings.”
Now, the same social media platforms that encouraged the exodus of tens of thousands of youths toward the Spanish exclave city are being used by parents who have lost track of children who fled to Spain, in a desperate bid to locate them.
On Sunday, standing at the border in the town of Fnideq, a 50-year-old shopkeeper from Tétouan who declined to give his name showed a photo of his 20-year-old son, from whom he had not heard since Thursday. “He swam across on July 30th and sent me a video from Ceuta to say he had arrived safely. We haven’t heard from him since, and we haven’t slept since then. My wife is desperate,” the distressed man told reporters at the fence where migrants who crossed illegally into Ceuta were returning to Morocco. “Have you seen this boy?” he asked the youths walking dejectedly back to their country as he showed them the photo on Facebook links. “I don’t want him to come back from Spain. I could send him €4,000 or €5,000 so he can start a new life,” he told reporters.
Images of missing youths have been circulating on platforms such as Instagram and TikTok since the weekend. The local network Tetuán Tube, cited by the news agency Efe, has published 16 photos of young men and a few underage boys, sent by anguished families. Similar images of another 12 youths were published by the local newspaper Faro de Fnideq. The Moroccan Red Crescent has not yet taken charge of their search.
Parents of Moroccan minors who crossed by swimming around the Tarajal breakwater are still waiting at the Fnideq fence for their kids to return. Aisha, a woman of about 40 who came here from Tétouan (50 kilometers to the south), waited on Saturday for her two children: her youngest, 12, and her older daughter, 15. “My daughter sent me a message saying she had arrived in Spain, but I still don’t know anything about my son,” she said through tears, holding a phone showing his photo.
Silence from the government
In this atmosphere of anguish, the revelation by the Moroccan news site Nichan that Prime Minister Aziz Ajanuch had allegedly undertaken a private trip to Spain in the middle of the migration crisis has stoked popular outrage. The head of government attended Throne Day ceremonies on Friday that were presided over by King Mohammed VI in Tétouan province, just a few miles from the Ceuta border, where a tide of migrants was overwhelming the border as Moroccan security forces stood aside. Shortly afterward, several Moroccan media outlets say, he boarded his private plane bound for the island of Mallorca.
Ajanuch, whose family controls one of the country’s main fortunes, returned to Morocco on Sunday night, Efe reports, when the government issued its first official statement after three days of crisis. With less than two months to the legislative elections, the conservative politician has already confirmed he will not seek another term as prime minister.
“With Ajanuch we have reached a record of irresponsibility,” human rights activist Latifa Bushimi protested on Facebook, quoted by the digital outlet Lakome. “Mothers are looking for their children after the Ceuta tragedy, and Ajanuch leaves on a private flight to Mallorca,” the portal Choque político also noted, questioning the timing of the private trip even as the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, was rushing to Ceuta on Friday.
The dream of an open gate
“The gate of Ceuta is open to everyone. Share this.” Fatem Ben Samar el Azizi, 20, was one of the Moroccans who believed the message circulating on social media. The young soccer player for Maghreb de Tétouan drowned while trying to swim to Spanish territory from Fnideq. A social media statement confirmed her death on Saturday.
The Moroccan Union of Professional Footballers also expressed condolences to the young woman’s family and to her teammates. “She was not seeking fame or adventure, but a new door for her future,” the club said, lamenting the high price paid for irregular migration, which “turned her dream into a nightmare.”
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