Spain's King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia were greeted by an enthusiastic crowd in Ceuta, visiting a few months after the migration crisis

The King of Spain Felipe VI arrived in Ceuta on Tuesday October 13, welcomed by an enthusiastic crowd for this diplomatically sensitive visit, two and a half months after the massive influx of migrants into this Spanish enclave in northern Africa, whose sovereignty is claimed by Morocco.

The sovereign and Queen Letizia shook many hands and spoke with the Ceutians present in large numbers near the town hall of the city, the first stop of their trip. “Felipe, Felipe!”, “Long live Spain”, shout the spectators, many of whom wave Spanish or Ceuta flags. “We have been waiting for this visit for a long time,” Toñi Jiménez, a 56-year-old caregiver, told AFP: “It means a lot to us, because it is a support that helps prevent our next door neighbor, Morocco, from constantly being in this logic according to which Ceuta and Melilla are Moroccan.”

This is the first visit by a Spanish sovereign to the enclave since that of Juan Carlos, the father of Felipe VI, in 2007, which then caused a diplomatic crisis with Rabat. On Wednesday, Felipe VI and Letizia will travel to Melilla, the other Spanish enclave located in North African territory. This trip is testing relations with Morocco, whose “partnership” with Spain was defended by King Mohammed VI on Friday while firmly rejecting any attempt at “pressure” or “blackmail”: the Moroccan sovereign affirmed before Parliament that the partnership with Madrid had made “significant progress”, including in the fight against irregular migration, but that it was today facing “major challenges”.

The visit of Felipe VI and Letizia also comes less than seven weeks before the early elections of November 29, when the migration issue promises to be one of the major themes of the campaign. Nearly two decades after the last royal visit, Ceuta, which has some 80,000 inhabitants, is trying to regain a certain normality after the shock caused by the arrival of more than 70,000 migrants from Morocco at the end of July.

Although most left in the hours that followed, several thousand remained in this small territory located between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, where part of the population felt abandoned by the State. Ana María Díaz, a 69-year-old retiree, says she feels “great joy” about this royal visit, even if she judges that it takes place “a little late”. Ceuta “is doing very badly”, she believes: “I think they should have seen everything. How it was before, and how it is still today,” continues the retiree, while the last migrant camps on the beaches of the enclave were dismantled in the days preceding the arrival of the sovereigns.

The authorities have set up centers to accommodate more than 7,000 people and 2,800 minors, but some continue to live in the streets of the enclave or in the hills, mainly on the outskirts. On Sunday, the police evacuated the Guano camp, the last one still present on the territory's beaches. A few minutes later, bulldozers reduced the makeshift shelters where some 400 people lived to rubble.

After a meeting with the local authorities at the city hall, the visit of Felipe VI and Letizia will continue to a school in the city where Catholic, Muslim, Jewish and Hindu communities historically coexist. The sovereigns will then go to the Sidi Embarek cemetery, where they will pay tribute to more than a hundred people who died during the massive arrival of migrants, according to Madrid and Rabat. Later, Felipe VI, who has already described the events in Ceuta as “unacceptable”, will speak at a meeting with representatives of Ceutian civil society.