Spain has sent soldiers and additional police to Ceuta, its city on the Moroccan coast, after tens of thousands of people crossed into it over the past week. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez travelled there on Friday. He called the crossings an attack and a violation of Spain's territorial sovereignty.

The counts have not been reconciled. Al Jazeera reported on Friday that about 60,000 people had entered Ceuta over the preceding days. The National put the figure at close to 49,000 on the same day. Al Jazeera also reported at least 34 people killed, and that more than 25,000 had since returned to Morocco voluntarily. Ceuta covers 18.5 square kilometres.

The interior ministry sent 200 specialist police officers and reinforcements to the Civil Guard from Andalusia. Two further platoons, 40 soldiers, joined the 80 already in the city. Diving teams and coastguard vessels were moved to the shoreline. The interior minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, travelled to Ceuta this week to inspect conditions.

Ceuta's authorities have linked the surge to a Spanish Supreme Court ruling handed down this month. The ruling bars officials from immediately returning people intercepted after arriving by sea without a due process assessment. It does not apply to the land border. Most of those who reached the city this week did so by swimming.

Ceuta's mayor-president, Juan Jesus Vivas, has asked Madrid to declare a state of emergency. "There is no more room for anyone," he told Spanish television.

The reaction from other European capitals came quickly. The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said the images coming from Ceuta were unacceptable. Italy's prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, said Italy would not stand by and watch. Italy's foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, called for Spain's suspension from the Schengen area, arguing that Spanish grants of citizenship to people who arrived irregularly encourage trafficking. Spain rejected that. Josep Borrell, the former EU foreign policy chief, said suspending a member state from Schengen is not legally available.

Sanchez answered the criticism with a table. He presented figures on irregular entries into the European Union between 2021 and 2026 that put Italy at the top with 478,000 arrivals, followed by the western Balkans route, then Greece, then Spain. He said Spain recorded a reduction in irregular immigration of around 40 per cent last year, and that the current situation was unexpected.

Morocco has deployed security forces and water cannon on its side of the boundary and has said it will cooperate on repatriations. It does not recognise Spanish sovereignty over Ceuta, or over Melilla, the second Spanish city on its coast. That position sets the ceiling on how far joint management of the border can go, and it has done so through every previous surge.

Sanchez said he would defend Ceuta as if it were Madrid. As of Friday no state of emergency had been declared, the reinforcements were in place, and the two published counts of how many people crossed still differed by more than 10,000.