At a time when the debate over migration is drawing a great deal of heat, Spain has stood out in Europe for its liberal stance. Six months ago, the government of Pedro Sánchez opened up a pathway to legal residency for hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants. So, when tens of thousands of migrants crossed from Morocco into the tiny Spanish enclave of Ceuta on July 30, the uproar was not confined to Spain.

This came days after Spain’s supreme court had ruled that migrants stopped at sea while trying to reach Ceuta or Melilla, another Spanish enclave on the coast of Africa, could not simply be returned from whence they came. While many commentators blamed this ruling for the sudden dash for Ceuta, more than 95% of the migrants who entered on July 30 have since returned to Morocco via the land border.

Nonetheless, the events of July 30 stirred up a hornets’ nest in Spain, where the Sanchez government, which has a minority of seats in the Spanish parliament, is under severe pressure from conservative and far-right parties. Spain’s far-right Vox party, led by Santiago Abascal, has been running hot on the subject ever since.

As Deniz Torcu, an expert in globalisation at Spain’s IE university, notes, the footage of migrants surging past, or swimming around, barriers into Ceuta immediately changed the tone of the migration debate in Spain – and elsewhere in Europe. “The optics are a gift for Europe’s far right, and they know precisely what to do with it. They can lose every argument about the real numbers and still come out ahead, because their aim is to make the story of a welcoming Spain look foolish.”

Read more: How the Ceuta border crossing incident immediately played into the hands of Spain’s far........

© The Conversation