MADRID — Spain's Interior Ministry announced on Saturday a fresh deployment of Guardia Civil officers and reinforced fencing at the North African enclave of Ceuta, more than a month after as many as 7,000 migrants breached the border on July 30 and 31. The ministry said the measures aimed to prevent a repeat of the largest single incursion the enclave has recorded.

The July crossing overwhelmed local services and left hundreds of migrants, many of them Moroccan minors, sheltering in Ceuta. Spanish authorities have struggled to return people across the frontier, and the enclave's government has said it lacks the capacity to house those who remain.

Relations between Madrid and Rabat have soured over the episode. Spanish Interior Ministry officials have privately accused Morocco of relaxing its border controls, while Moroccan authorities have declined to accept unaccompanied minors without formal identification procedures.

Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said the government would seek renewed cooperation with Rabat while insisting Spain would defend its territorial integrity. Opposition Partido Popular figures have accused Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of losing control of the southern border and demanded an emergency parliamentary appearance.

The standoff echoes the May 2021 crisis, when thousands crossed into Ceuta amid a diplomatic dispute over Western Sahara, underscoring how migration remains a lever in the fraught relationship between the two neighbours.