Spanish judge orders secret CNI files on Ceuta released as Guardia Civil counts 90 dead
Judge María Tardón has given the Spanish government 15 days to declassify intelligence on the July crossings from Morocco, including the note its spies sent Rabat; as a Guardia Civil report puts returns at 88,146, rescues at 862 and deaths at 90.
Published 9 November 2026 · 07:23 GMT
The summary
27 October 2026: Judge María Tardón, of Spain's Audiencia Nacional, orders the government to declassify CNI material on the Ceuta crossings urgently and within 15 calendar days. The order covers the full text of the CNI note sent to Morocco's DGED and DGST, all CNI notes circulated from 30 July onward, and a military intelligence report dated 4 August.
The three lenses
- WestThe Western lens reads the Ceuta files as a story about accountability inside a democracy.
- EastThe Eastern lens has, so far, barely looked at the Ceuta files at all.
- Global SouthThe Southern lens starts from Rabat, not Madrid.
Key facts
- 27 October 2026: Judge María Tardón, of Spain's Audiencia Nacional, orders the government to declassify CNI material on the Ceuta crossings urgently and within 15 calendar days. CGPJ
- The order covers the full text of the CNI note sent to Morocco's DGED and DGST, all CNI notes circulated from 30 July onward, and a military intelligence report dated 4 August. CGPJ
- About 88,146 returns: a Guardia Civil report dated 27 October, disclosed on 6 November, estimates that about 88,146 people have returned to Morocco since 30 July; it also counts 862 rescues and 90 deaths. El País
- About 72,000 crossed on 30 and 31 July, according to the Spanish government; Reuters had previously reported 82 deaths confirmed on the Spanish side and 14 more in Morocco. Reuters
- About 40,000 crossings: the Moroccan authorities put the number near 40,000, and the National Human Rights Council counted 23 online groups with more than a million members generating some 1,400 posts a day. Hespress
- 13 October 2026: King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia pay tribute at the Sidi Embarek Muslim cemetery in Ceuta, where 90 of the dead are buried, most identified only by numbers. Diario de Santiago
The court order that turns a border crisis into a paper trail
A Spanish judge has ordered the government to open its intelligence files on the mass crossing into Ceuta from Morocco in July, and the first documents to emerge are already complicating the official account of those two days. Judge María Tardón, of the Audiencia Nacional in Madrid, told the Council of Ministers on 27 October to declassify, urgently and within 15 calendar days, the intelligence material on the crossings of 30 and 31 July; including the full text of the note Spain's Centro Nacional de Inteligencia sent to Morocco's DGED and DGST. The order, published by Spain's judicial council, also demands the list of officials who received the intelligence notes already released, and a report by military intelligence dated 4 August. It comes as a Guardia Civil report, dated the same day and disclosed on 6 November, estimates about 88,146 returns to Morocco, more than the roughly 72,000 entries the government counts, with 862 rescues at sea and 90 deaths. Three months later the border was still under strain, when Moroccan police intercepted a lone swimmer trying to reach Ceuta, as we reported in October (our report on the interception off Ceuta).
Warnings in July, a court order in October, figures in November
The sequence the documents establish so far runs like this. On 8 July, Spain's Supreme Court issued a ruling the CNI warned could encourage irregular crossings toward Ceuta and Melilla, and on 27 July the CNI put the risk from Morocco at a low level, marked green on its traffic-light chart. On 29 July, the day before the surge, the CNI alerted the Guardia Civil's intelligence unit and the Interior Ministry about online groups with some 180,000 followers urging a mass entry into Ceuta, by WhatsApp and by telephone; a warning the Interior Ministry's second-in-command, Aina Calvo, left out of the written account she sent the judge, according to Cadena SER. On 30 and 31 July, tens of thousands crossed from Morocco into Ceuta: the government put the number at about 72,000, the Moroccan authorities near 40,000. On 8 September the government declassified 40 documents. On 27 October, Judge Tardón issued her order and the Guardia Civil dated its report; the report's figures became public on 6 November, and on 8 November the Moroccan press, relaying Jeune Afrique, reported the judge's demand for the exchanges with Rabat's services.
What is still missing from the files?
The central unknown is the content of the CNI note sent to Morocco's DGED and DGST, and whether Rabat answered. The judge has asked for the full text and for every communication the two Moroccan services sent or received about warnings during July; until the government declassifies them, no one outside the investigation can say what Madrid told Rabat, when, or what came back. A second unknown is why the 29 July warning, delivered by WhatsApp and telephone to the Interior Ministry's chief of staff and to the Guardia Civil's intelligence unit, does not appear in the written account the ministry's number two sent the court; whether omission or filing failure is what the judge is trying to establish. A third is the arithmetic: the Guardia Civil's estimate of about 88,146 returns is higher than the government's count of about 72,000 entries, and the report presents the figure as an estimate, not a register. Nor is it settled who the dead were: 90 people lie at Sidi Embarek, most identified only by numbers. Finally, nothing released so far establishes any responsibility on the Moroccan side; the judge's request for material on the Moroccan authorities' conduct is an inquiry, not a finding.
The deadliest border incident in years, now a test of accountability
This matters because the Ceuta surge was one of the deadliest incidents at a European Union border in recent years, 90 people dead on the Spanish side, with a further 14 deaths reported in Morocco, and because it was organised in the open, on social media, in front of two governments that had been warned. The investigation has become the test of whether Spain's institutions can account for what they knew and when they knew it, and the answer depends on documents the government itself must choose to release. For Morocco, the stakes run the other way: the files will show what Rabat was told and what it did with the warning, when the Kingdom's cooperation on migration is central to its ties with Madrid and Brussels. The European Commission has already cited the lessons of Ceuta in its proposals to reinforce Frontex, so the inquiry's findings will shape how Europe polices its southern frontier. And the politics are immediate: with elections on 29 November, migration is a central campaign issue, and the judge's deadline of about 11 November falls in the campaign's final stretch.
What the files would settle; and what they cannot
The order is narrow, and that is its strength. Judge Tardón is not asking for a narrative; she is asking for a paper trail with timestamps, who received the notes of 27 and 30 July, at what hour, with certification of arrival, and for the full text of what the CNI sent to the DGED and the DGST. If the government complies by about 11 November, three questions get answers within days: whether Rabat was warned in terms matching the scale of what followed, whether Madrid's chain of command passed the warning on, and whether the Moroccan services replied. Those answers matter more than any figure, because the dispute is not really about 72,000 against 40,000, estimates made in the fog of a surge, but about whether two states sharing a border and an intelligence relationship were talking in the days that counted. The files cannot settle the deeper, structural question: a mass crossing organised through online groups with hundreds of thousands of members is a different kind of border event from a smuggling operation, and neither country's apparatus was clearly built for it. The CNDH's count of 1,400 posts a day suggests the mobilisation was visible; the question is who was watching. The autumn has already reordered Morocco's diplomatic files; the United Nations mission in the Moroccan Sahara stood down on 1 November (our report on the end of the MINURSO mission); and the Ceuta files will show whether the intelligence relationship with Madrid kept pace.
Frontex, the campaign, and the next mass call
The second-order effects reach in three directions. In Brussels, the Commission's proposals to reinforce Frontex already cite the lessons of Ceuta, and a finding that warnings were lost or ignored would harden the case for earlier warning systems and shared situational pictures with southern neighbours, including Morocco, whose cooperation the Union pays for and depends on. In Madrid, the calendar does the damage: the deadline falls days before the 29 November elections, and every document released, or withheld; will be read as a campaign fact, with the right and far right already making migration their central theme. In Rabat, the inquiry puts the intelligence relationship itself under a light it rarely gets: the DGED and the DGST are being discussed in a Spanish courtroom, and whatever the files show about their exchanges with the CNI will shape how far both sides trust each other with the next warning. And there will be a next warning: the groups that organised July's surge have not disappeared, and the energy ties binding the two shores; the Nigeria–Morocco gas pipeline now being pitched to investors (our report on the pipeline's investor push) among them; mean the border is also a corridor, not only a fence. The cemetery at Sidi Embarek, where 90 of the dead lie, most still numbered rather than named, is the quietest second-order fact of all.
The deadline, the decision, and the documents
The next step belongs to the Spanish government. Judge Tardón's order requires declassification urgently and within 15 calendar days of receipt, a deadline that falls around 11 November, and any material released goes into a sealed section of the case file, where the judge and the parties can examine it without making classified material public. What the Council of Ministers decides will determine whether the investigation can move to its next steps, including hearing the intelligence officers whose testimony the judge has requested. Beyond the courtroom, two counts will keep moving: the returns estimate will be tested against the entry figures, and the identification of the dead at Sidi Embarek will continue, name by name. The investigation remains open, and it is, by the judge's framing, about establishing what the authorities knew and when; a question the files, once opened, should finally answer.
The three lenses
West Lens:
The Western lens reads the Ceuta files as a story about accountability inside a democracy. Spanish coverage, El País, Cadena SER, and the judicial council's publication of the order, concentrates on what the government knew, what it told the judge, and what it left out. The question it keeps asking is procedural: who received which warning, at what hour, and why the paper trail has gaps.
East Lens:
The Eastern lens has, so far, barely looked at the Ceuta files at all. No independently reported account of the judge's order or the Guardia Civil's figures has surfaced from the Asian outlets we checked, CNA, The Hindu, NHK and Kyodo among them, and the closest East reporting on Ceuta remains the CGTN account of the lone swimmer intercepted in October, which framed the episode as order restored. Read from the East, it is a European institutional drama at a distance: a court, a spy service and a government arguing over paper.
South Lens:
The Southern lens starts from Rabat, not Madrid. Moroccan coverage, Hespress relaying Jeune Afrique, and the National Human Rights Council's figures, leads with the scale of the online mobilisation: 23 groups, more than a million members, some 1,400 posts a day, and the Moroccan estimate of about 40,000 crossings against Madrid's 72,000. From this side of the strait, the story is about a country asked to police a border against a mobilisation organised on phones, and about what its services were told, in time or too late.
The consensus
- What we agree on
- What we agree on: on 27 October 2026, Judge María Tardón ordered the Spanish government to declassify, urgently and within 15 calendar days, CNI material on the mass crossings into Ceuta of 30 and 31 July, including the full text of the note the CNI sent to Morocco's DGED and DGST; a Guardia Civil report dated the same day, disclosed on 6 November, estimates about 88,146 returns to Morocco, 862 rescues and 90 deaths; and the government had already declassified 40 documents on 8 September.
- What we don't agree on
- What we don't agree on: how many people crossed, the Spanish government says about 72,000 and the Moroccan authorities say about 40,000, while the Guardia Civil's estimate of about 88,146 returns is higher than either entry count, and whether the Moroccan authorities were warned in time and acted on the warning, a question the declassification itself is meant to answer.
- What we know
- What we know: the dates of the warnings; the CNI note of 27 July, the alert of 29 July about online groups with some 180,000 members, the crossings of 30 and 31 July, the 40 documents released on 8 September, the tribute at Sidi Embarek on 13 October, and the court order and the Guardia Civil report of 27 October.
- What we don't know yet
- What we don't know: what the CNI note to the DGED and the DGST actually said, whether the Moroccan services replied, why the 29 July warning does not appear in the Interior Ministry's written account to the judge, how the returns estimate exceeds the entries count, and the identities of most of the 90 dead.
- What we expect
- What we expect: a government decision on declassification by about 11 November, further releases of CNI material into the sealed case file, testimony from CNI officers once the necessary material is declassified, and continued identification work for the dead buried at Sidi Embarek.
Questions, answered
What has the Spanish judge ordered?
Judge María Tardón has ordered the Spanish government to declassify, urgently and within 15 calendar days, intelligence material on the mass crossings into Ceuta of 30 and 31 July. The order covers CNI notes circulated from 30 July onward, the full text of the note the CNI sent to Morocco's DGED and DGST, and a military intelligence report dated 4 August.
How many people crossed, returned and died?
The Spanish government says about 72,000 people crossed on 30 and 31 July; the Moroccan authorities put the figure near 40,000. A Guardia Civil report estimates about 88,146 people have since returned to Morocco, and counts 862 rescues at sea and 90 deaths on the Spanish side.
What did Spain's intelligence know before the crossings?
The CNI warned on 27 July that a Supreme Court ruling could encourage crossings, then alerted the Guardia Civil and the Interior Ministry on 29 July about online groups with some 180,000 members urging a mass entry. The same day it alerted Morocco's intelligence services. Whether those warnings were passed on in full is part of the investigation.
What happens next?
The government must decide on declassification by about 11 November, and any material released goes into a sealed section of the case file. The judge has also asked for material that would allow CNI officers to testify. The investigation remains open, and the identification of the dead continues.
Sources
- CGPJ
- El País (6 Nov 2026); the Guardia Civil report: about 88,146 returns to Morocco, 862 rescues in Spanish waters and 90 deaths on the Spanish side
- Reuters
- Hespress (8 Nov 2026); relaying Jeune Afrique: the alerts from 29 July, the Moroccan estimate of about 40,000 crossings, the CNDH's count of 23 groups and 1,400 daily posts, and the 29 November elections context
- Diario de Santiago (13 Oct 2026); King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia pay tribute at the Sidi Embarek cemetery, where 90 of the dead are buried, most identified only by numbers