Ceuta, settlements shift to the beach and a government official resigns

In Ceuta, the day of September 12, 2026 produced two facts that should be read together: one material, one political.

The first. A fire hit 42 shacks in the Tarajal industrial area. After the blaze, groups of migrants returned to the same settlement, as reported by El País’s live coverage, which cites fire service and police sources. That same morning, on Benítez beach, more than one hundred makeshift structures had already been counted: this is documented in the on-the-ground report by Cadena SER, which describes shelters built with reeds.

The second. Gonzalo Sanz, chief of staff of the government delegate in Ceuta, resigned after reiterating that he had passed on CNI warnings on July 29. The controversy therefore concerns the information available before the mass entry: according to El País, in that episode more than 70,000 people crossed the border in 48 hours.

The weighty number and its status

The figure is worth pausing on. Seventy thousand people in two days is a figure that, if confirmed, redefines the scale of what is happening in the autonomous city: not a flow, an event. In today’s material that number has a single attribution, El País, and does not appear accompanied by an official Spanish count. We therefore publish it as we find it — attributed to the outlet reporting it — and not as data confirmed by an authority. If in the coming days an institutional accounting arrives, even a lower one, we will report it as a declared revision, not as a new truth.

The other figures have a different, more solid status: 42 shacks hit by the fire, “more than one hundred” shelters on Benítez beach. These are counts on the ground, made by those who were present, and remain estimates: a makeshift structure has no cadastral boundaries.

What the shift indicates

A settlement that moves from an industrial zone to a beach is not a geographical detail. It changes visibility — an urban beach is a public place, the back of an industrial area is not — and it changes the exposure of the people living there, to weather phenomena as much as to pressure from the authorities. The return of groups to Tarajal after the fire, on the same day, also indicates that the destruction of shelters does not move people: it moves materials.

After the fire, groups of migrants returned to the same settlement: the burned shacks did not change the destination of the people.

The political part

The resignation of a chief of staff is an administrative act, not a verdict on anyone. The public point is the sequence that the official himself reiterated before leaving: the CNI warnings date back to July 29 and would have been passed on. The open question — who received them, how they were assessed and what decisions followed — finds no answer in today’s material, and we do not construct one by deduction.

This publication does not cover investigations and proceedings: here we stay within the dimension that is already public, namely the chain of communications between State offices and the political assumption of responsibility that followed.

What we do not know

We do not know how many people are currently in the settlements at Tarajal and Benítez beach. We do not know whether there were consequences for people during the fire: the material indicates the shacks hit, not a health toll. We do not know what the Spanish authorities’ plan is for the two settlements, nor whether alternative reception facilities are planned.

The verifiable data as of today is that in Ceuta there are at least two informal settlements active at the same time, one of which repopulated a few hours after being burned.