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Ceuta’s Camp of the Saints Moment

Nathan Pinkoski

August 7, 2026

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Last week, some 70,000 African migrants invaded Ceuta. A coastal town of 84,000 people, Ceuta is the last remnant of Spanish presence in North Africa, along with the town of Melilla further down the Moroccan coast and several other islands. Still, it’s ancient Iberian land. The Portuguese took control of Ceuta in 1415. A few decades later, it became de facto Spanish, and in 1668, the Portuguese formally ceded it to Spain, which has controlled the area ever since. Hence the seriousness of last week’s crisis.

The migrants were overwhelmingly young men. They stormed into Ceuta by land and sea, overwhelming security barriers and marching through the town, stealing and looting. It’s exactly the kind of scene that Jean Raspail imagined in his 1973 dystopian novel The Camp of the Saints, cementing that once-marginalized and sometimes-banned novel into the mainstream of public discourse. But the novel’s relevance does not come from narratives of migrant delinquency. It comes from anticipating the West’s abdication of responsibility.

In Ceuta, the migrants came as raiders, not conquerors. After a few days, hungry and driven out of the supermarkets, many returned to Morocco. Spanish law enforcement is now arresting and deporting the remainder, though thousands are still in the hills. Because most have left, the Spanish government of Pedro Sánchez can breathe a sigh of relief. Threats from other countries to suspend the Schengen Agreement with Spain have dissipated into familiar calls for more European solidarity to handle migrant influx. The war of words against Morocco for allegedly stoking the crisis has subsided. For Spain’s interior minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska, “there doesn’t necessarily have to be anyone to blame.”

That’s an extraordinary statement. Sánchez has enticed migrants to come, presenting himself as the global champion of pro-migrant progressivism. Earlier this year, his government approved a plan to grant amnesty and social benefits to 500,000 illegals. Spain spends over €1.8 billion per annum on support for migrants and only €60 million on stopping illegal entry. It funds pro-migrant, progressive NGOs in Morocco. In Spain, Sánchez has boosted funding for hosting unaccompanied minors. And in July, when the Spanish Supreme Court made it more difficult to expel migrants caught trying to swim into Ceuta and Melilla, the Interior Ministry ignored intelligence warnings about the impending swarm.

Grande-Marlaska’s evasions of responsibility find a ready parallel in Raspail’s novel. The Camp of the Saints recounts a million migrants setting out in a rickety flotilla from the Indian subcontinent to France. The governments of the migrants’ countries of origin “disclaim any and all responsibility” for whatever happens. The French government, moved by humanitarian principles, proposes to roll out the welcoming committee for the migrants. But balking at the cost, the government invites other countries “to share responsibility for the burden of generosity,” maybe even placing the fleet under U.N. protection. Other countries aren’t eager to participate. Leaders avoid confronting the hard choice of turning the migrants away, hoping that more food, aid, or storms will stop or sink the rickety fleet and save them from making a difficult decision. That doesn’t happen.

With the imminent arrival of the fleet on French shores, the president of France must finally act. “I have ordered our national army to use force to resist their landing, for I clearly state, cowardice in the face of weakness is one of the most potent, most subtle, and most deadly forms of cowardice,” he declares in a national address. But then he falters, abandoning his script: “Killing is difficult.” And so he releases “every soldier, every police officer, every gendarme, every officer” from his duties. Each can decide for himself what to do. That formula is the ultimate abdication of political responsibility. Authority has negated itself. “With the France of the Enlightenment brought to her knees of her own accord,” writes Raspail, no other Western government “will now dare take responsibility in its own name.” And so with that act, before the migrants have yet landed, France and a whole civilization have committed suicide.

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