Ceuta: 48,300 returns and 7,000 unaccompanied minors that don't add up

Ceuta: 48,300 returns according to the Interior Ministry, 7,000 unaccompanied minors nobody can explain

How much does it cost to believe that 48,300 of the 50,000 migrants who entered Ceuta irregularly have already returned to Segarro? Spain's Interior Ministry takes it as a given: a mass return, clean and apparently cost-free. The arithmetic doesn't add up even in the most optimistic scenario: if 48,300 have left, 1,700 remain. But published reports speak of around 7,000 unaccompanied minors in the care of the authorities. Seven hundred, not one thousand seven hundred. Seven thousand.

The gap between the official figure and reality is paid for in euros and in credibility. Every minor in state care requires accommodation, food, and health and education services. At that number, the cost is considerable and is not covered by the blessing of the return: the unaccompanied minors don't go back just because the count says so.

There is also an economic reason for the scepticism: managing migration crises is not free, and when someone offers a figure as round as 48,300, it's worth remembering that public accounts don't allow for rounding. A 96.6% return rate would be a historic success. So historic that it resembles no previous crisis.

And the question hanging in the air, ironically, is whether Spain's Prime Minister counted them one by one. Because the only exact figure in circulation, 48,304 and a half, suggests that absolute precision is a joke.