The Beach You Would Never Set Foot On

The Trampolín beach in Ceuta is a place that both moves and frightens. For 37 days, hundreds of men have crowded into makeshift shelters there, creating a grim image of Morocco as seen from Ceuta. Fights are frequent, and the latest incident was worse than the one witnessed the previous day.

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voluntarily

Police sources told EFE that military vehicles and Civil Guard officers were met with stones when they approached the beach after being alerted to the scale of a brawl. Twenty-one identified migrants then returned “voluntarily” to Morocco through the El Tarajal border crossing. No one was injured.

The Spanish Association of Troops and Sailors said the confrontations keep recurring because personnel lack enough authority to do their work effectively and decisively. At the beach, the article describes a camp of cane shelters and cheap camping tents, while workers from the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation prepare 50 tents at the Poniente pier, each able to house 14 people.

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because they are not given enough authority to carry out their work effectively and decisively

Those who remain have built a small informal economy while waiting for their hoped-for journey to mainland Spain. People sell yogurt, soft drinks, clothes, shoes and tobacco. A marked area points toward Mecca. Abdul, a 22-year-old hairdresser, earns money cutting hair with a neat case of scissors, combs and shaving brushes. He says his friend Taha, 21, is a mechanic, pastry chef and logistics worker.

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I am a hairdresser and my friend Taha is a mechanic, pastry chef and has worked in logistics.

Abdul and Taha say Morocco is improving, but wages are not. When another fight erupts near their makeshift workplace, they quickly insist that the men involved do not represent them and are drunk. The scene leaves the camp’s daily degradation exposed, even as those still there continue to wait and hope.

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Morocco is improving, it is true, but wages are not.