A note to accompany the letter from Jorge Serrano Paradinas to European leaders relating to recent events in Ceuta.
Recent events in Ceuta, a Spanish enclave on Moroccan territory, cost over 100 lives and affected thousands of people. Their causes and potential impact are debated, but UAI is concerned by the facts, which are not contested.
When the Prime Ministers of Italy and Denmark persuaded 22 other European countries to sign a letter to the European Commission condemning the Spanish government and justice system for offering what they considered a threat to European borders and the Schengen area, not only the Spanish government but also Spanish civil society reacted strongly, defending those policies and correcting much of the disinformation surrounding them.
One of the strongest reactions came from Jorge Serrano Paradinas, the coordinator of the citizen-led initiative behind Spain’s regularization of undocumented immigrants. It is his response to the joint letter by European leaders that we publish here.
Mr Serrano’s letter strongly rebuts many of the myths and inaccuracies that have found favour among certain elements of society and government.
The crucial points in Serrano’s letter
Spain’s regularization is strictly retroactive and grants no rights to anyone crossing into Spain today. It therefore cannot logically be a “pull factor”, as some leaders have claimed. Blaming the policy for a crisis it could not have caused deflects attention from the harder question of why people are still dying at Europe’s borders.
What the Spanish law reveals is a truth that UAI and its campaign partners have argued since the Campaign’s inception: safe, legal, and dignified pathways are possible where there is political will.
The Spanish law is the result of the mobilization of more than 700,000 Spanish citizens, over 1,000 organizations, and some 17,000 volunteers, and it was adopted by 310 parliamentary votes against only 33.
Not new detention or new deterrence
Despite improvements in the situation, events such as those in Ceuta continue to be the object of manipulation and opportunistic political instrumentalization.
If Ceuta becomes a pretext for weakening Schengen, expanding detention, or further outsourcing migration control, then more people will die, not fewer. This is precisely the warning given by UAI and its campaign partners in their June 2026 statement on the EU Pact and Strategy.
The five steps set out in the Manifesto of the Campaign to Stop the Inhumanity at Europe’s Borders remain the alternative: stop pushbacks and protect life at sea; humanize reception; end third-country containment; build real safe routes; and guarantee justice and redress.
Watch, read, and join us
Watch Jorge Serrano’s speech; read our statement on the EU Pact and Strategy; and read the Campaign Manifesto in full.
There is another and better way. Let us embrace it.
