Spain sweats over its isolated territories in Africa – POLITICO

The surge of migrants into the Spanish exclaves of Ceuta and Melilla last week has thrown Madrid onto the defensive over the status of its two autonomous cities in northern Africa — and Morocco’s long-standing claim to them.

The ease with which tens of thousands of migrants penetrated the border has ramped up a sense of vulnerability to hybrid attack. And that alarm has only been amplified by a fear that traditional NATO allies in the U.S. and the EU are no longer fully dependable because of their political feuds with Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.

Buoyed by an increasingly warm relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump, Rabat is seizing the moment and doubling down on its claims to Ceuta and Melilla, which it sees as occupied territory, in Morocco’s state-aligned press.