OLD VIDEOS HAVE been reused, falsely purporting to show thousands of migrants again overrunning the borders of Ceuta. 

This footage was actually taken during the migrant crisis in July. 

While there have been further attempts by migrants to enter Ceuta from Morocco, including a group of almost 300 people, these were stopped and did not enter the Spanish enclave. 

The old footage was shared by numerous social media accounts, including British far-right agitator Tommy Robinson, who said: “A ‘second wave’ of migrants attempting to cross the border from Morocco into the sovereign Spanish enclave of Ceuta.”

The video shared in these posts appears to show hundreds of people walking and running in different directions on a road close to the sea at nighttime.

Robinson’s post on X, which also endorsed the Spanish conservative party Vox, has been viewed more than 520,000 times since being published on 18 August.

The video was also shared to Instagram on 16 August by a Portuguese member of parliament for the right-wing populist Chega party. His post, which garnered more than 1,600,000 views, read: “Tonight, the border in Ceuta is not just a line on a map, it’s the front of a growing crisis”.

Other posts including claims that the same clips showed a second wave of immigrants, were also posted to Facebook, where they have accumulated more than a million views.

However, the footage that these posts are showing is from July. There have been no reports in local Spanish media suggesting that a second mass migration has occurred.

Much smaller groups, including one of fewer than 300 people, have attempted to enter Ceuta since July’s crisis. However, these were stopped before the border by Moroccan security forces.

The original footage was posted by a Moroccan Instagram user, and it shows the highway between the Moroccan town of Fnideq and the fortified border of Ceuta.

The video posted on 31 July.

It was published on Instagram on 31 July, during the original crisis in Ceuta, which saw about 80,000 people cross into the Spanish-controlled territory. Most of the people then left again within days.

About 3,500 remain there.

That initial crisis also spurred incorrect claims online, such as that many of the people involved had already travelled across Europe, or that the Spanish were not launching a response due to an “open borders” policy.

The cause of the crisis remains contested.

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