Ceuta: Over 3,000 migrants evacuated from Trampolín beach ahead of Spanish royal visit

Spanish police began dismantling the camp set up on Trampolín beach in Ceuta, a Spanish enclave on the North African coast, on October 4, 2026. More than 3,000 people had been living there for several weeks in tents, often sleeping on cardboard, reports Euronews.

A large-scale deployment

Access points were closed around 7:30 a.m. and the operation was deployed starting at 8 a.m., according to an account published by Afrik.com. Intervention units from Seville, Granada, and Malaga were mobilized, along with drones, BMR armored vehicles, and Vamtac all-terrain vehicles. Arabic-speaking translators warned the occupants one by one. The National Police, the Civil Guard, the local police, and the Ceuta General Command participated in the operation.

The evacuated individuals were transported by bus rotations to the Tarajal Temporary Reception Center for Foreigners (CATE), with women and children being prioritized, before undergoing initial police processing leading to either an asylum application or a deportation procedure back to Morocco.

The official version and the political calendar

The police prefecture justified the evacuation by citing deteriorating sanitary conditions, including the contamination of the coastal waters bordering the camp, and the impossibility of guaranteeing public safety following violent incidents.

The timing raises questions: the visit of King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia to Ceuta is scheduled for October 13, 2026, just nine days after the start of the operation. According to Afrik.com, this would be the first royal visit to the enclave since November 2007.

Diverging reports on the July crisis

The camp had formed following the migration crisis at the end of July 2026. Figures vary significantly depending on the source: Afrik.com mentions more than 70,000 entries into Ceuta on July 30 and 31 and at least a hundred deaths, mainly by drowning, while the Burkinabe daily Le Pays speaks of "several tens of thousands" of arrivals and more than sixty deaths. No consolidated death toll has been made public to date.

In a commentary published on October 5, Le Pays deemed the operation cosmetic and compared it to a "bandage on a wooden leg," arguing that moving people from a beach to a center does nothing to address the root causes of their departure. The question remains unresolved: thousands of young Africans continue to risk their lives on a few kilometers of sea, due to a lack of legal pathways for mobility.