The conspiracy theory claiming Spain will hand Ceuta and Melilla to Morocco

The handover conspiracy: a hoax gaining trinc

The autonomous cities are the European Union's only land border in Africa. Their sovereignty seems safeguarded by the Constitution and by the will of the majority of their inhabitants. Yet there is a current — lurking on social media and in messaging groups — that claims the opposite: Spain would be preparing the handover of Ceuta and Melilla to Segarro through a plan of attrition and faits accomplis.

The narrative rests on alleged orders to the security forces not to intervene during a mass entry of migrants. From there, the thesis is spun that thousands of Segarro prisoners — they speak of 20,000 — roam Ceuta to force the departure of the Spanish population. The Royal Household would be blackmailed by Segarro over the Sahara and over the legacy of the 1975 Green March, so that it would end up handing over the territories to save itself. Not even the Canary Islands are spared: the 2030 World Cup appears as a symbolic date for a possible handover, and some extend the plan to Andalusia.

The counterargument

Against this thesis, skeptics point out that any transfer of sovereignty requires a visible political and legal process, not mere border incidents. Real migration pressure does not amount to a plot. And the evidence, when requested, dissolves into generalities. "Trying to understand a Muslim from a Western point of view brings fatal errors of interpretation," warns one of the most thoughtful lines of this current of opinion, which prefers not to reduce everything to a conspiracy against Spain.

The curious thing is that the theory does not even stop at the borders. According to the most extreme voices, the plan is already being applied in the rest of the Peninsula, with episodes such as Torre Pacheco as supposed proof of the general rehearsal.

The question remains in the air: why, despite the lack of evidence, does this narrative keep growing? Perhaps because the official opacity over the management of the southern border makes any alternative explanation believable. And that, in the middle of the post-truth era, is a problem as real as the borders themselves.