Like, did that play any role? If you could just set the record straight for us, do we know what influenced this latest surge?

I mean, as I said, there, there really ought to be, and I hope there w-will still be a, a very serious investigation because what we have until now Are different investigations, uh, reports by different newspapers.

Spanish newspapers have looked into the dissemination of rumors in, in, in social networks.

There have also been analyses by Moroccan analysts that have shown how rumors were spreading, rumors that said in various, uh, social networks that Ceuta was open.

Well, I mean, it obviously wasn't open, a- and the fact that so many people died trying to enter it should have made that, in hindsight, very clear.

But the fact that these rumors spread and that many people, uh, hundreds of thousands of messages responded, still doesn't explain why it was possible for so many people to get so close.

A- a- and then this was building up not just in 24 hours, over a week already.

What will be the implications of that, especially on legal migrants who are attempting to reach Europe hoping for better lives?

Now, on that, I'm gonna hand over to Gerald to try to give us a little bit of the recent history of what happened in the last week and what's happened in Ceuta over the last few years.

Well, what we all saw in the last week, I, I think it's worth underlining, it was completely extraordinary in terms of the numbers involved.

50,000 people crossing in one day a European Union border, in this case, uh, to this ex- Spanish exclave.

That is five times more than, uh, uh, during the refugee crisis in the Greek islands when on average 10,000 people crossed from Turkey to Greece, and we remember the dramatic pictures.

And what makes this even more striking is, as you said, Ceuta is a small place, 85,000 people.

So if 50 or even 60,000 people, as the mayor of the town said, come in suddenly, I mean, it is an invasion.

I mean, this is how people experience it [laughs].

What should they do?

That is an image that we haven't seen much.

You are completely right, and, and, uh, what we are seeing is images beat statistics.

But images also need a story that people have already bought into to make, to, so they can make sense of what the image means, and the big story that has been established over the last 10 years with astonishing success by, uh, Viktor Orbán and others who think like him, is that all the migration story of the last 15 years in Europe is about the failure of liberal elites.

And he calls everyone who doesn't agree with him liberal.

You know, conservatives, Christian Democrats, they are all liberals.

They don't want to control migration because of some nefarious interests to exploit migrants for business or to exchange the population, all these theories.

And because this is increasingly believed by part of the population that there is this inability of elites, and perhaps, uh, no, a lack of interest to control migration, every single instance with dramatic images that you see confirms this.

Or the percep- the perception of it.

What, what are the facts? What do we know?

Well, what we know is that this was an extraordinary development that we haven't seen anything like this in, in decades.

Uh, the town is 85,000 people, and the estimates are that in 24 hours 60,000 people entered the town, mainly Moroccans, also, uh, smaller numbers of, of other Sub-Saharan Africans, but mainly Moroccans from around the area, and many of them were swimming.

Uh, it's a very dangerous, uh, bit of sea there, and we are now getting reports that many people died.

Uh, the li- latest number I've seen is above 80 people died.

Perhaps it's going to be even more.

Um, but for 24 hours, 60,000 Moroccans entered the city, which is otherwise surrounded by high fences.

What have the diplomatic r-ramifications been from other European nations?

Wh- what are the facts? What do we know?

Well, what we know is that this was an extraordinary development, that we haven't seen anything like this in, in decades.

Uh, the town is 85,000 people, and the estimates are that in 24 hours 60,000 people entered the town, mainly Moroccans, also, uh, smaller numbers of, of other Sub-Saharan Africans, but mainly Moroccans from around the area, and many of them were swimming.

Uh, it's a very dangerous, uh, bit of sea there, and we are now getting reports that many people died.

Uh, the lat-latest number I've seen is above 80 people died.

Perhaps it's going to be even more.

Um, but for 24 hours, 60,000 Moroccans entered the city, which is otherwise surrounded by high fences.

What have the diplomatic r- ramifications been from other European nations?

Was, was ist da los?

Also d-das große Bild ist, dass man in der Europäischen Union, auch wenn man in Griechenland ankommt, auch wenn man in Lampedusa ankommt, äh, es gibt kein Recht zu bleiben, aber es gibt ein Recht auf ein Verfahren.

Jetzt gibt es das Gerücht aufgrund eines Gerichtsverfahrens, ein Gerichtsurteil, das festgestellt hat, Menschen, die über das Meer kommen, darf Spanien nicht einfach zurückschicken.

Am Zaun ist die Lage etwas unklarer.

Da gibt's zum Beispiel auch ein Urteil des Europäischen Gerichtshofs für Menschenrechte von vor ein paar Jahren, das gesagt hat, wenn es 'ne Alternative gegeben hätte, sich zum Beispiel für Asyl irgendwo zu bewerben an der Grenze von Ceuta oder Melilla, dann ist es legitim, Menschen an dem Zaun abzuhalten.

Aber was nicht geht, ist eine Person, die auf irgendeine Art das Territorium, die Städte erreicht, einfach ohne Verfahren abzuschieben.

Das ist keine spanische Besonderheit.

Ich glaube, das ist auch der Grund, warum viele jetzt auch völlig abseits des populistischen Spektrums da sehr sensibel sind, ähm, wenn sie solche Bilder sehen, weil sie sich fragen, ähm, na ja, wie viele von denen werden jetzt wirklich kontrolliert? Was bedeutet das? Ähm, und, und, und was sendet das auch für eine Message, eine, eine, ja, eine Nachricht nach, nach Deutschland, nach Europa? Ja, wie, wie, wie bewerten Sie diese Sorgen, diese Ängste, die es ja gibt?

Some clearly believe, rightly or wrongly, that Spain is a, a soft touch when it comes to migration.

Yes, but the facts just show that this is not true.

Spain has had less irregular arrivals.

In the first six months of this year, fourteen thousand people arrived at all borders in Spain irregularly.

It's sixteen thousand from Italy, eighteen thousand in, in Greece.

So, so no, there's no soft touch.

And the regularization of migrants concerns people who've been in Spain, ninety percent of whom are from Latin America, who arrived legally, visa-free, and then stayed on to work.

You acknowledge the political side of this, though, presumably the fact that, um, largely on, on the right in politics, parties have been able to exploit and highlight extreme concern amongst parts of European populations about recent migration, and that the parties of the center and the left feel very sensitive to that pressure.

Where are they on a scale?

I think they will be closest to Trump.

I mean, Höcke, I mean, he's written a book.

Let me just say that the, his own party tried twice to expel him when there was still this battle over what direction the party should go.

Recently, the party leader, Alice Weidel, said that in a AfD government, she would make him a minister.

You know, it's now Höcke's AfD.

I don't think it's useful to talk about the AfD anymore in abstract because it's, it's now Höcke's AfD that's there, an Identitarian party.

How realistic would you take that from your sort of studying of the way the far right operates and the way that our democracies are weakening?