Political Instability
At the weekend thousands of migrants broke through the border from Morocco into one of the small enclaves of land on the Moroccan coast still controlled by Spain. At Ceuta the border was “stormed” by up to 60,000 migrants who pushed through gates and fences from Morocco into the Spanish territory. Each country is blaming the other for a variety of reasons and political tensions are rising again. For a while in 2021 the border was closed for a month after a political dispute between the two countries.
The outbound ferry is from France to Morocco and away from the troubled area of Ceuta which is opposite Gibraltar but the crossing at Melilla where we land is still having a problem. Although the paperwork for the crossing from Spain into Morocco is completed on the boat there is a still a heavily guarded border crossing at Beni Ansar just 5km from the ferry port. If we arrive and the crossing is closed then we are trapped in the Spanish enclave which is only about 5sq miles – about twice the size of Heathrow airport.
We have to pay the full value for our ferry crossings on 31st August and are watching the situation closely. If we pay the full fee but cannot leave the Spanish enclave I don’t think that the ferry company will refund us so we will have to take a close look at our travel insurance too.
Our choice is to lose €60 deposit and cancel the trip maybe until next year or pay €400 and hope that we can get out of Melilla and into Morocco without problems or at least within a few days of arriving.
Our plans are to return home via Spain and so any unrest at Tangier-med or closed borders with Spain would be another problem. Nothing is booked for the returns so if the shorter crossing at Tangier is closed we could drive the extra 250 miles back to Melilla again and hope we can jump one of the longer crossings.
The Morocco–Algeria land border has been closed since 1994 and there is no legal overland crossing between the two countries so the ferries between Spain and Algeria are not an option so if things cut up rough on the way back we would just have to sit it out.
