Expert SpeakRaisina Debates
Published on Aug 04, 2026
Spain’s Ceuta crisis shows how a much smaller migration story can still hand the far-right a much bigger win
Spain has spent the past year being cited as Europe’s migration success story. The Canary Islands route, once the continent’s deadliest crossing point, saw arrivals fall sharply in early 2026 after Madrid worked with West African governments to strike new interception agreements. Unfortunately, the relief has been partial and geographically uneven. While crossings to the Canaries dropped, they surged elsewhere: irregular arrivals to the North African enclave of Ceuta jumped roughly 150 percent year-on-year by mid-2026, and the Balearic Islands have logged record numbers of their own.
Last week, things seemed to reach a breaking point: tens of thousands of Moroccan migrants, mostly young men, rushed into the Spanish territory of Ceuta on Africa’s northern coast, overwhelming migrant centres, public spaces, and, most importantly, local authorities. By now, most have been sent back to Morocco, but the continent-wide reverberations have only just begun. Disinformation is spreading like wildfire online; far-right parties across Europe have framed the chaos as an invasion and a national security threat; Italy temporarily suspended its Schengen free-travel agreement with Spain; and, yet again, the deep fault lines in Europe’s fraught immigration debate have been exposed.
Centrist European political parties should view this as an opportunity to have an honest debate about immigration and reclaim the rhetoric from the far-right — something they failed to do during the immigration crisis a decade ago.
Disinformation is spreading like wildfire online; far-right parties across Europe have framed the chaos as an invasion and a national security threat; Italy temporarily suspended its Schengen free-travel agreement with Spain; and, yet again, the deep fault lines in Europe’s fraught immigration debate have been exposed.
Today, Europe is no longer a continent where far-right parties are fringe protest movements. They are governing partners, inside coalitions in seven EU states. Austria’s Freedom Party topped a national election for the first time in September 2024. Germany’s AfD keeps setting new polling records. France’s National Rally, despite Marine Le Pen’s legal troubles, is readying itself for the 2027 presidential race. Sweden heads to the polls in September 2026, with the right-wing Sweden Democrats already shaping government policy on residency and deportation from outside the cabinet. And a renewed spike in arrivals anywhere in Spain hands the right-wing Vox party fresh material at a critical moment. Additionally, anti-immigration rhetoric is now mainstream vocabulary even among centre-right and centre-left parties trying to hold onto voters.
A decade ago, the defining image of immigration in Europe was former German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s message of “Wir schaffen das” (in English: we will manage it), and over a million arrivals in a single year. This was driven mostly by the Syrian civil war and processed through an EU asylum system that was shoddy and had never been so thoroughly tested. The difference between then and now is stark: today’s immigration numbers may be smaller, but the architecture for turning them into political weapons is far more developed and popular than it was in 2015. A decade ago, right-wing parties were still improvising, testing what kind of rhetoric resonated with the public — and it turned out anti-immigration rhetoric resonated a great deal. Today, that improvisation has hardened into infrastructure: established media ecosystems and actual governing power in multiple capitals to translate rhetoric into policy. Right-wing parties in government mean a growing focus on deportation targets, residency claw-backs, and pressure on the EU’s new Pact on Migration and Asylum, which member states are already fighting over before it’s even fully implemented.
A decade ago, right-wing parties were still improvising, testing what kind of rhetoric resonated with the public — and it turned out anti-immigration rhetoric resonated a great deal. Today, that improvisation has hardened into infrastructure: established media ecosystems and actual governing power in multiple capitals to translate rhetoric into policy.
The risk for 2026-2027 isn’t a repeat of 2015’s scale. The risk is that a much smaller, more manageable set of numbers gets amplified by a far-right infrastructure that is far more coordinated and powerful than it was a decade ago. Right-wing leaders are no longer shouting from the opposition benches; they are shaping policy from inside government.
How centre-right and centre-left parties deal with this will be crucial. Moderate parties must use this moment to have an actual, open debate about immigration instead of simply dismissing right-wing rhetoric outright. If far-right messaging clearly lands with voters, then dismissing it all as racist and anti-European risks alienating the very voters centrist parties are hoping to court, pushing them directly into the arms of the far-right.
Instead, moderate parties should acknowledge the legitimate anxieties underlying anti-immigration sentiment — concerns about integration, strains on public services, and labour market competition — rather than treating every voter who raises them as prejudiced. This means being willing to engage on specifics, proposing credible, enforceable policies on border management, asylum processing, and integration, rather than vague appeals to “European values” that sound evasive to voters who already feel unheard.
Moderate parties should acknowledge the legitimate anxieties underlying anti-immigration sentiment — concerns about integration, strains on public services, and labour market competition — rather than treating every voter who raises them as prejudiced.
It also means being honest about the trade-offs instead of claiming that immigration carries none at all. To be clear, this is not the same as adopting far-right framing or capitulating to its more exclusionary premises. Rather, it’s about reclaiming the debate so that competence and control aren’t, by default, ceded to parties that have made deportation and closed borders their signature issues.
If the centre continues to treat the topic as a political third rail, it will keep losing ground. Not because voters have become more extreme, but because it has left the field wide open to those who at least appear willing to acknowledge and tackle the issues directly. No matter what, immigration will be a key issue in future elections across the continent. How centrist parties choose to talk about it is up to them, but their political future may rest on it.
Rachel Rizzois a Senior Fellow with the Strategic Studies Programme at the Observer Research Foundation.
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Author
Rachel Rizzo
Rachel Rizzo is a Senior Fellow with ORF’s Strategic Studies Programme. Her work focuses on US foreign and defence policy, the transatlantic partnership, and US-Europe-India …
