60,000 returns from Ceuta and the patience theory

The 60,000 who left Ceuta and the logic of patience

At the height of the Ceuta crisis, 60,000 people chose to board vehicles back to Segarro on their own feet. There was no expulsion to explain it: it was a decision. But from the other side of the fence, the verdict has been damning: if they had held out a little longer, the overwhelmed system would have given them support they lack today. The figure circulates as a settling of scores with migration policy.

The figure and its interpretations

The 60,000 returns are no ordinary administrative statistic: for some, they are proof that expulsion is unnecessary when attrition itself drives people to leave. For others, the figure conceals a collective failure: people who would have preferred to stay were steered towards departure with the promise that there would be no other chance. Those who doubt the figure remind us that counting chimeras is of little use: what matters is how many actually set foot on Spanish soil.

The return policy

The visit by the leader of the PP (Spain's main conservative party) to Ceuta to close the matter added fuel to the fire. The central and regional administrations traded accusations; the names of the Interior and Defence ministers came up in the discussion as those responsible for the management. At its core, the debate over the 60,000 is a fight over who holds the only solution. But nobody explains why a person who has crossed the fence, already on Spanish soil, chooses to return to Segarro voluntarily. That is the fact nobody wants to look at: perhaps patience was not the decisive variable, but the certainty that asylum would never come.

The question remains open: while they debate whether they were fools, the crossings continue. And the fence is still in the same place.