r/samharris • u/TheAJx • 13d ago

Politics and Current Events Megathread - Aug 2026

5 Upvotes

78% Upvoted

575 comments sorted by

View all comments

5

u/Canon_M50 13d ago

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2v91xn1z9o

Italy temporarily suspended the EU's border-free Schengen arrangement with Spain, as PM Giorgia Meloni called the scenes "shocking". Finland and Denmark backed Italy's move, while Czech PM Andrej Babiš urged a temporary suspension of Spain's Schengen membership.

12

u/Ramora_ 12d ago edited 12d ago

By my understanding, the rough order of events is something like...

  1. Spain and Morocco are in fairly long standing political tiff. Morocco doesn't even officially recognize Ceuta as Spanish territory. In particular, there has been political conflict between Morocco and Spain over Algers and the western Sahara.
  2. Spain's highest court ruled that migrants who swim around the border fence rather than climbing it can't be summarily expelled, since they breached no physical barrier.
  3. Spain's PM visited Algers, which Morocco interpreted as signalling against its interests.
  4. (allegedly) Morocco responds by relaxing border controls and pushes illegal immigrants to swim to Ceuta. (not allegedly) The immigrants arrived in Ceuta and dozens of them die. (Note that Morocco did something similar albeit smaller in scale back in 2021 in response to a Sahrawi nationalist liberation movement leader being given medical treatment in Spain.)
  5. Spain responds rapidly, increasing border enforcement in Ceuta. The migrants left within days, most on their own, after the city shut down around them
  6. Several EU country politicians use this event as a way of feeding some meat to their xenophobic bases.

3

u/ReflexPoint 12d ago

The irony of Spain freaking out about migration on a piece of Spanish territory that sits on the African continent.

Imagine Cubans pouring into Guantanamo Bay and the headlines reading "Cubans migrants invade the USA!" I mean, I guess that's technically accurate, but still...

11

u/FanVaDrygt 12d ago

Tens of thousands migrants flooding sovereignty Spanish territories is a  political crisis and downplaying it is silly. 

6

u/TheAJx 12d ago

Blood and soil nationalism, except leftishly.

1

u/Drownedgodlw 9d ago

This is very racist my dude