CEUTA, Spain -- Residents of Spain's multi-ethnic city of Ceuta are used to being in the news every time the fragile alliance between Spain and Morocco shakes up.
For many "Ceutis," as locals are known, that comes with being a speck of a European nation in North Africa. The city is culturally closely intertwined with Morocco, with Muslims making over 40% of its population, but also separated from it by high perimeter fences that set apart the two extremes of poverty and prosperity.
But when relations hit a two-decade low last week over Spain's help to one of Morocco's top enemies, the Ceutis confronted the sudden arrival of thousands of African migrants with sympathy, concern and, in some cases, hostility.
Dozens of migrants gathered for respite outside of Nawal Ben Chalout's family home, where she had shifted around to give shelter to three young men.
"The boys are very confused, very scared, I talk to them, and they ask for food," Ben Chalout said, adding that her neighbors were also opening their doors to offer a place to sleep and eat. "Sometimes they don't even want food. They have questions, they want information."
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But solidarity with migrants in Ceuta has not been unanimous.
Fouad, an Algerian man who was in Morocco and crossed into Ceuta last week, said armed men woke him up pointing a gun at him. They beat him and others with a stick, used pepper spray on him and took his phone and money.
One migrant was taken to a hospital after the beating, said Fouad, who declined to give his last name for fear of reprisal and deportation.
Of the 8,000 migrants who arrived in just 48 hours in the city of 85,000, Spanish authorities have since expelled 7,000 to Morocco. The Spanish government says around 800 of those who remain in Ceuta are minors.
The migrant influx was a reminder of the inequality between the two sides. While per capita gross domestic product in 2019 was $30,000 on the Spanish side, it drops to $3,200 across the border, according to the World Bank.
But the bustling businesses of Spain's Ceuta and Fnideq, the closest Moroccan town, have taken a big hit during the pandemic. With the border closed, over 30,000 workers who used to commute across it daily have been jobless for much of the past year.
Even before the pandemic hit, nationalist voices in Rabat were reviving old claims on Ceuta and Melilla, Spain's second coastal enclave in North Africa.
That has fueled anti-Moroccan sentiment in Ceuta, a feeling tapped into by Spain's new far-right party Vox, which became the city's most popular party in Spain's 2019 vote.
Vox has referred to the influx of migrants as an "invasion," but the term has been also used by some conservatives, including the autonomous city's president, Juan Jesus Vivas.
Fouad and others directed their anger at the Moroccan government for using them as pawns in the diplomatic impasse with Spain.
The government in Rabat has denied that it loosened border control to allow the migrants to cross, blaming it on the weather and the post-Ramadan "exhaustion" of its border guards. It has also criticized Spain for providing covid-19 treatment to Brahim Ghail, the head of the Polisario Front that is fighting to make Western Sahara independent of Morocco, which annexed it in the 1970s.
