The migrant crisis in Ceuta and its historical roots in the Portuguese conquest of 1415

The migration crisis in Ceuta and its political consequences in Spain and Europe cannot be understood without looking back at history. Ceuta, the last European possession in Africa to survive with Melilla, is also the oldest. Located on the southern shore of the Strait of Gibraltar and about fifteen kilometers from Spain, the city was taken by the Portuguese in 1415. At the time, the kings of Portugal, who had completed the reconquest of their country from the Muslims a century and a half earlier, were still animated by a spirit of crusade and were now going on the offensive. Why do they choose Ceuta, a trading port and small city? No doubt because the famous Rock of Gibraltar which faces it, then under the control of the Muslim Nasrid dynasty who still reign in Granada, is already coveted by the Castilians who are approaching and burning to bring down the last Moorish kingdom of the Iberian Peninsula. But the Portuguese, for a long time at war with…