Chest pressure

Spanish football’s messages of support for Ceuta have had a mixed reaction among La Liga squads

By THOMAS HUNT

Since the end of July, news bulletins in Spain have been dominated by one subject: Ceuta, a city of 85,000 people and one of the country’s two north African coastal enclaves. The reverberations following the massive border crossing from Morocco into Ceuta continue to be felt – including in the sphere of Spanish football.

There have been shows of support for Ceuta at matches, leading to controversy. There was also a visit made to the enclave by Spain coach Luis de la Fuente, who – together with Spanish FA president Rafael Louzán – took the World Cup trophy along with him, and another by Real Madrid president Florentino Pérez.

For English football followers at least, Ceuta was a place probably best known before this crisis as the home of Nayim, the one-time Tottenham player whose goal from an improbable distance past David Seaman won Real Zaragoza the 1995 European Cup-Winners Cup final against Arsenal. That changed on July 30 and 31 when an estimated 72,000 migrants entered Ceuta, by land and sea, from neighbouring Morocco. More than 140 people are reported to have died in attempting the crossing. By the end of September, some 10,000 reportedly remained in the enclave.

More than 140 people are reported to have died in attempting the crossing

Unlike after the deadly flooding in Valencia in 2024 or this year’s devastating earthquake in Venezuela, La Liga has not organised the expressions of solidarity seen at top-flight fixtures. Rather, they are the work of AVE, a Valencia-based business association headed by Vicente Boluda, a former interim president of Real Madrid.

However, the push for players to wear T-shirts carrying the message “We are all Caballas” – Caballas being the nickname for the citizens of Ceuta – has not received unanimous support. When Barcelona visited Levante on September 13, only the home side wore the T-shirts. Two days later, the Real Madrid trio of Kylian Mbappé, Vinícius Júnior and Ibrahima Konaté sparked controversy by partly obscuring the message by rolling their shirts up to their chests before the match at Elche. Javier Tebas, president of La Liga, criticised the trio’s action though Mbappé explained his stance to Spanish sports daily AS , saying: “I don’t want to prioritise suffering.”

Elaborating his point, Mbappé – whose parents are originally from Cameroon and Algeria – said: “The first thing I want to say is that I have complete solidarity with Ceuta and all the victims because before being a player, I am a human. But I also wanted to make a gesture and express my thoughts for all the immigrants who have lost their lives and who are also living in difficult conditions.”

At the Madrid derby on September 20 at the Metropolitano Stadium, a group of Atlético ultras responded by unveiling a banner with the message “Ceuta is Spain. It is neither rolled up nor covered”. Videos on social media featured the alarming sight of some ultras performing Nazi salutes as the banner was paraded.

Time will tell the truth about the political forces behind a humanitarian crisis which has put huge pressure on Spain’s pro-immigration socialist government and even led Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to cite the spread of disinformation by social media accounts “associated with Russia, Israel and the international far right”.

The political fallout has also prompted questions about the 2030 men’s World Cup in which Spain and Morocco will be the main co-hosts together with Portugal. Indeed, left-wing party Sumar, a junior partner in Spain’s coalition government, actually presented a motion in the country’s parliament in early August asking Spain’s sports authorities to revisit the co-hosting plan.

Over in Morocco, meanwhile, fans of title-holders Maghreb Fez displayed a banner referring to both of Spain’s north African enclaves during an African Champions League match against Burkina Faso’s Rahimo on September 6. It read: “Ceuta and Melilla. Two cities, one homeland: Morocco.”

Back in Spain, those pro-Ceuta T-shirts had their own ripples for Real Betis’s Moroccan winger Abde Ezzalouli who faced reported online abuse, from his home country, for wearing one before the game against Villarreal. As for his club, they had a solidarity match with AD Ceuta, the enclave’s second-division team, planned for the long autumn international break.

In announcing the Spain squad for that first chunk of Nations League games, the Spanish FA continued the solidarity theme by using clips of De la Fuente’s visit to Ceuta. It showed the coach with local youngsters and the World Cup trophy, and it ended with him saying: “This is Ceuta, this is Spain.” True, but, as the crisis goes on, security concerns then meant Spain’s Under-20 fixture against Mexico, originally scheduled to take place in Ceuta on September 30, was moved to Madrid. Spain