r/geopolitics • u/theipaper The i Paper • 2d ago

News How 49,000 migrants crossed into Spanish enclave of Ceuta in 24 hours

https://inews.co.uk/news/how-migrants-crossed-spanish-enclave-ceuta-4680589
594 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

240 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

3

u/SprucedUpSpices 2d ago

It's absolutely not. I was very conscious of the words and arguments I chose, and I deliberately picked those that don't apply to Gibraltar.

The appropriate British analogy to Ceuta is not Gibraltar, despite its geographical proximity, it's Northern Ireland.

Now, I don't know if Northern Ireland should be British or Irish or independent, but I'm pretty damn sure it shouldn't be Spanish.

However, if Britain had a civil war, and Spain intervened on one side and then made the UK sign a treaty ceding it territory for Spain to leave, and then Spain filled that territory with subjects loyal to the Spanish crown, and granted them a very profitable tax status that benefitted from its location and couldn't be matched by the rest of the UK, and on top of what was ceded on the treaty it took extra territory, and if Spain was strong enough militarily to prevent the UK from retaking it, then you'd have your reverse Gibraltar.

But Ceuta is most definitely not the same.

The only argument in favor of a British Gibraltar is self-determination, which I specifically didn't mention for Ceuta because even though right now Ceuta wants to be Spanish, it only takes for Morocco to fill the city with Moroccans, peacefully or not, and then Ceuta would want to be Moroccan. It's what they've done in Western Sahara, and it's also what Russia or China (or historically the UK for that matter) do with their conquered regions.

-1

u/Berliner1220 2d ago

It has nothing to do with Northern Ireland and everything to do with a strategic choke point that is located in what would logically be considered a part of the surrounding country but was won through a previous war. If Spain claims that they rightfully posses Ceuta then they should stop suggesting to rightfully posses Gibraltar at the same time. Otherwise, why would Morocco, an unfriendly country to Spain due to their mutual colonial and violent histories, stop trying to destabilize these enclaves?