The city of Fnideq (Castillejos, in its Spanish colonial name) was overwhelmed this Friday by a tide of thousands of young people who are now leaving Ceuta disappointed, after having broken into the Spanish autonomous city without the Moroccan authorities preventing them. “No one helped us in Spain. They had told us we would have a place to stay and a visa to travel to Algeciras, but it was all a lie,” explains Mohamed, 18 years old, along with other exhausted young people in the shade of a closed café.
Mohamed neither studies nor works. He had arrived the day before from Fez, 290 kilometers to the south, to cross into Ceuta via the border breakwater. That’s what he did. But this Friday he returned to Moroccan territory. In Castillejos, along with other companions, he regains strength before continuing to look for some means of transport to return to his place of origin.
The dream of obtaining proper papers to travel to the Peninsula and legally emigrate to Europe has not been fulfilled. Many migrants have slept outdoors in gardens and vacant lots. They have eaten thanks to the help of neighbors. Or through money transfers from relatives via ATMs. Scorched by the sun, exhausted, they crowded at noon in all kinds of vehicles trying to return to their homes deep inside Morocco, after having failed in their effort to open a future outside their country.
This return journey marks a new milestone of frustration for a disillusioned generation. Castillejos is a city with hardly any open businesses due to fear of looting. In the few that remain open, groups of young men in shorts crowd to try to buy some food. They miss the iced soft drinks, saturated with sugar to the Maghreb taste. The police patrol the streets indifferently while most residents stay in their homes, fearful of possible acts of violence from a hungry and disillusioned youth mass.
The clashes at dawn between police and migrants at the Ceuta border are now behind by early afternoon, after security forces fired tear gas and water cannons at the young people occupying the surrounding hills. Only a few irregular migrants were still crossing towards Ceuta amid the crowd of returnees from the Spanish border. Entire families, with minor children and babies in their arms, had arrived in Castillejos attracted by unfounded messages about an unimpeded border opening to travel to Spain and try to make their way in Europe.
A new life in Spain
Saina, 35, is a single mother, a condition that still socially stigmatizes a woman in contemporary Morocco. She had traveled from Larache (on the Atlantic coast of northern Morocco). With her son Yussef, just over a year old, she was trying to start a new life in Spain without grievances thanks to her fluent Spanish. “We will be there soon,” she assured confidently early Friday morning. At dawn, the Moroccan security forces had completely cleared the area.
The Moroccan Association for Human Rights reported this Friday that near the Nador border (north) with Melilla there were violent clashes between security forces and hundreds of young people, according to the Efe agency. Images spread on social networks showed live fire shots by police officers amid scenes of tension.
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