Spanish Spies Warned of Ceuta Breach Day Before

Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares said the documents show no one flagged how big the surge would be. "I am speaking as Spain's foreign minister, within my remit and based on what I experienced that day. I was not aware of any information of any kind pointing to the magnitude of the avalanche," he told reporters Wednesday.

A spokesman from Sanchez's office rejected the idea that the files proved advance warning of a crossing on that scale: "The published documents show that the information available prior to the massive influx did not make it possible to anticipate the magnitude the crisis ultimately reached, nor to gauge the necessary response sufficiently in advance."

Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said at the time that authorities faced "an extraordinary, exceptional situation" and that the government was "dealing with it with the means that we already have deployed there permanently."

Critics blame Sanchez's government for the crisis, and opponents accuse him of pandering to Rabat by declining to accuse Morocco's government of orchestrating the incident. Major protests have followed the arrivals, with near-daily demonstrations by Ceuta residents angry at Madrid's handling of the crisis. The Moroccan government did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.