People among the more than 50,000 who entered Spanish enclave this week describe the journey and their prospects Four days ago, Youssef El Abbas saw an opportunity to reclaim the l…

People among the more than 50,000 who entered Spanish enclave this week describe the journey and their prospects Four days ago, Youssef El Abbas saw an opportunity to reclaim the life he had lost seven years earlier. News was circulating that about 400 people had swum from Morocco to the neighbouring Spanish enclave of Ceuta on the north African coast, approximately 12 miles (19km) across the strait of Gibraltar from mainland Spain. Here was a chance for the 44-year-old Moroccan father of four to return to Spain, from which he had been deported when his residency expired after the loss of his job in Bilbao in 2019. El Abbas took a taxi and headed to the city of Tétouan, south of the enclave. While en route, he saw Facebook posts and news reports claiming that the Moroccan authorities were allowing people to pass through their side of the border. That meant that unlike those who had crossed the previous night, he could simply travel overland before swimming for just five minutes across the border from Moroccan to Spanish territory to avoid the Spanish border controls. He reached Tétouan to find the city completely overwhelmed. “Young men were running through the streets, flooding every corner,” he said. By the time a second taxi took El Abbas to Fnideq, the town bordering Ceuta, he realised that the usual blockades and checkpoints preventing people without European documents from even approaching the frontier had been removed. “The Moroccan police were shouting at us: ‘Go, go, go! Run now, run into Spain,’” he said. “The night before, they were beating people. But that morning they were letting us through. Nothing made sense.” Despite the crowds, El Abbas noticed the police were only letting Moroccans cross over. “All the sub-Saharan migrants were being pushed back by force.” He reached the border at 2.45pm on Wednesday. By 3pm, after a short swim, he was standing on Spanish soil. Not everyone was so lucky.