With a clean smile and showing the victory gesture in her left hand, Farah S., a young Moroccan woman who has just swum to Ceuta, allows herself to be photographed by a reporter from El Faro, a local Ceuta newspaper. Upon arrival, the girl, a promising Moroccan athlete, lover of soccer and volleyball, walks barefoot, aimlessly, through the streets of the city. The wetsuit in which he swam for around five kilometers is still wet.
This same night a Moroccan mother and her three children jumped into the water, although they did not manage to reach Ceuta. The gendarmerie of their country has rescued them before they fainted.
Farah, a minor, left from a beach in Castillejos, the town on the other side of the border fence that surrounds the autonomous city. It has just touched Spanish soil for the first time. She hasn't come alone. Her friend Bouchra, also from Larache like her, has accompanied her throughout her swimming journey.
It is the early morning of July 28, 2026. There are still two days left for the great human avalanche of more than 70,000 people that will burst into Ceuta through the breakwater that separates it from Morocco.
In that moment of euphoria, Farah does not even sense that her smiling face, her wet hair, her joy at reaching the Schengen territory—even though she is still in the north of the African continent—will almost immediately turn her into an icon of the biggest migration crisis in the recent history of Spain.
Even the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, José Manuel Albares, will refer to it a month later, in Madrid, during his appearance in the Foreign Affairs commission of the Congress of Deputies.
When he crossed Farah, Ceuta had been receiving hundreds of people for about a week who were swimming from the other side of the border after learning of a recent Supreme Court ruling that prevented anyone who arrived by sea from being returned immediately. At that time it was still the swimmers' crisis.
On August 28, Albares was forced to give explanations to the rest of the political parties in parliament. The minister pointed to Farah and her friend Bouchra.
He said that this image captured by El Faro photographer Joaquín Viera had been the germ so that, through social networks, a call effect towards Ceuta was produced in Morocco. Morocco, as the Government still maintains, although with nuances, had nothing to do with the issue.
"On July 8, the Supreme Court ruling is made public, the information crosses the networks," Albares said on the morning of August 28, 2026 in the Foreign Affairs commission.
«From July 8 to 23 there were few publications in Arabic about it. July 28: The video of two young women crossing the border goes viral, views skyrocket to 30 million in Morocco. The news is decontextualized and determines that the border was open. July 30, 60% of the publications are concentrated that day, 215 with the same text.
The spark ignited just two days after Farah's arrival. Ceuta, with 84,000 inhabitants, saw its population almost double in just 24 hours, between the morning of July 30 and 31. As of today, according to Government calculations, there are still around 5,000 immigrants in the city—about 1,500 of them are minors, like Farah.
This past Thursday, September 3, a Crónica reporter traveled to Ceuta to follow Farah's trail. The girl has become a legend for the Moroccans who crossed during those two historic days.
Everyone is happy to ask about her, although very few know for sure where she is. "Go to the Horse Riding," says a young man from Morocco who is wandering around Ceuta in the middle of the morning, when he is shown an image of the young woman. «Yes, yes, I know who it is. Farah! "They told me he was there, with many other women."
Social networks, especially Instagram and TikTok, are full of profiles created around the figure of Farah—and, to a lesser extent, her friend Bouchra. They have all been created based on that image of the girl making the victory gesture.
Some of the photos that appear in them have been taken from old profiles of Farah herself or from people who know her. In some she appears playing soccer on a beach with her teammates. Other images, however, have been created with Artificial Intelligence.
In one of the latter, generated with AI and published on TikTok, Farah appears dressed in neoprene, making the same gesture as when she arrived in Ceuta, but on top of a pedestal in the Plaza de España, in Seville. Above his feet it reads: "From the hell of Morocco to the paradise of Spain."
Last Friday, at the close of this supplement, that post had more than 195,000 views, had more than 300 comments and almost 8,000 likes. «I'm happy for her. Brave woman. I hope life is easier for you outside your country, inshallah (God willing),” a woman responded to that fake photo of Farah.
The Equestrian Center of Ceuta, known as the Hípica, is located on the outskirts of the city, next to a mountain. It is also located, fence by fence, next to the Temporary Stay Center for Immigrants (CETI).
The Government has set up a reception point for women and children at the Equestrian Centre. There, immigrants have tents where they can eat and sleep, as well as toilet areas. It welcomes around 250 people, currently, even outside, in tents, around 50 more are waiting to enter.
The reporter asks several adult women who leave that immigrant reception point about Farah. They all say they know her, but they assure that the teenager is not there. One of them says that she believes she is in the CETI, right in that facility whose fence can be seen from the door of the city's equestrian center. Difficult, since there are only adults there.
On the way to CETI, a young man approaches the perimeter fence of the facility. The boy wears an FC Barcelona shirt. He is Moroccan. Like the rest of his friends, he also immediately recognizes Farah's face.
"Yes, the girl from Larache who swam, wearing a wetsuit, before most of us," she says. «Of course we know her. Here—within the CETI—is a friend of yours who is also from there. He has been able to talk to her through the Instagram that was created after arriving in Ceuta. "He told me that Farah is in a center where there are only minors, but I don't know which one."
The Crónica route through Ceuta ends in an industrial estate near the Loma Margarita highway. In one of the warehouses, the Samu foundation has been hosting more than fifty underage girls since mid-August who until then were in another provisional camp in the city.
"Farah is here," says a Samu technician who leaves the facility to warn the reporter that all the people housed in said ship are minors and that he does not have authorization to speak with them.
"We can't give any information, I'm sorry," he says before closing the gate that separates him from the street again. Hours later, late last Thursday afternoon, a group of about twenty girls leaves the facility.
They are accompanied by a monitor. They have gone out to play soccer and stretch their legs in a nearby field. Among them is not Farah, who is still inside the ship in which she is currently residing.
Until this week, the Spanish Government had never pointed out Morocco as the architect, or even as permittor, of the arrival of more than 70,000 immigrants to Ceuta.
The Executive only mentioned the immigration mafias, the power of social networks to spread hoaxes (like Albares at the end of August), and even Israel and Russia as being behind it.
He also went on to say that there was no prior report that pointed out what was going to happen in the autonomous city.
However, this past Thursday, the Government qualified its position, after learning the content of a report from the National Center for Immigration and Borders (Cenif) sent to the National Court. This document indicates that Moroccan agents "guided" the entry of immigrants to Ceuta.
The Immigration report points to the "permissiveness" of the Moroccan authorities and uniformed and plainclothes gendarmes. He maintains that the entry was planned, although he does not define specific authorship.
On Thursday, in the Congress of Deputies, the president, Pedro Sánchez, toughened his speech regarding Morocco: he went from exempting the neighboring country from any responsibility in the crisis to not closing the door on it having any. He also warned that he will take action if "solid evidence" appears.
"We would act with total forcefulness," he said for the first time. "This Government is not afraid to confront other foreign powers," he added, although he insisted on the existence of "a conjunction" of factors and the actions of "numerous actors."
