Ceuta’s population today is ethnically and religiously mixed but has a clear preference to stick with Spain.
The dramatic (and, for now, largely reversed) migrant incursion into Ceuta has focused attention on a city that is not that often in the spotlight. Located on the North African coast, Ceuta is typically described as a Spanish “exclave,” although it is more accurately described as a semi-exclave.
To rejoice in some pedantry, “real” exclaves are separated from their parent countries by the territory of other nations. Semi-exclaves, such as Ceuta (and its twin, Melilla), Alaska, Russia’s Kaliningrad oblast, and Angola’s Cabinda are all coastal territories. Islands are not regarded as exclaves. Unleaded exclaves do exist, however. They are typically legacies of complex, but no longer pressing, histories. The Baarle-Hertog question is unlikely to lead to war between Belgium and the Netherlands.
Morocco is not going to go to war with Spain, but it would like to get its hands on Ceuta and Melilla. However, history is less helpful to its cause than Rabat or the online left believe. To focus for now on Ceuta, it was founded by the Phoenicians. Later it was a part of the Roman empire, and after that it became an important Byzantine city. The Byzantines were displaced in their turn by Islamic settler-colonists, not that they are typically referred to as such. Odd!
By the time of Ceuta’s conquest by the Portuguese in 1415, nearly 40 years, incidentally, before the Ottomans took Constantinople, Ceuta was (to oversimplify) a Berber (Amazigh) city, substantially Arabized, but not Arab. The Amazigh have not been well-treated in modern Morocco.
Legally, Ceuta is a Spanish city, as is Melilla. The U.N., which unless Russia or China is involved, is always on the hunt for anything it can deem to be colonialism, does not consider either Ceuta or Melilla to be colonies. On the other hand, it does consider Morocco’s control of the Western Sahara to be colonial. Those calling for the “return” of Ceuta and Melilla to Morocco should insist that Morocco pull out of the Western Sahara first. Morocco should lead by example!
Ceuta’s population today is ethnically and religiously mixed but has a clear preference to stick with Spain (just, ahem, as Gibraltarians wish to remain with the British). If self-determination still counts for anything, Ceuta should remain Spanish. The fact that it was controlled more than five hundred years ago by a distant sort-of-predecessor (it’s complicated) of the Moroccan state is like arguing that Prague should be given to Austria.
Then there are those who, following some variant of blood-and-soil logic, maintain that European cities have no place on the African continent, an interesting argument, to say the least. But if those are the rules, shouldn’t Morocco once again set a good example by persuading Turkey to hand back Constantinople (“Istanbul”) and the rest of its European land to Greece?