Official Spanish data establish a sharp increase in online racist or xenophobic content following the July 30 and 31, 2026 border crossings in Ceuta. The FARO monitoring system operated by Spain’s Observatory on Racism and Xenophobia, OBERAXE, detected 101,025 items in August, compared with 57,406 in July, representing a monthly increase of 76%. That figure primarily documents a change in the volume of content monitored across digital platforms.
According to the OBERAXE bulletin, 39% of the hate-speech content analyzed in August was connected to the Ceuta border crossings. This establishes a substantial association between the episode and the monitored digital conversation, but it does not attribute every item detected that month to the crisis. Nor is the figure a count of distinct users, legally adjudicated hate crimes, or confirmed physical attacks committed against Moroccans or other targeted people.
North Africans were the main digital target
People from North Africa were the principal target category in August, accounting for 72% of the hate-speech content analyzed, up from 68% in July. Migrants were targeted in 22% of detected content and Muslims in 18%. OBERAXE also recorded increased content directed at women and at unaccompanied children and adolescents, illustrating the range of groups exposed within the conversations examined by the official monitoring system.
These percentages describe categories that may overlap and therefore should not be added together. A single item may, for example, simultaneously target someone as North African, a migrant and a Muslim. That distinction is necessary to avoid presenting analytical classifications as mutually exclusive populations. Even with this limitation, the monitored corpus clearly identifies people from North Africa as the dominant target category during August and shows that their share increased compared with July.
Threat narratives and explicitly aggressive language
The language classifications provide another measure of the character of the surge. OBERAXE categorized 43% of monitored content as portraying targeted groups as a threat and 37% as dehumanizing them. It also found explicitly aggressive language in 58%, including insults, threats or disparagement. As with the target categories, these narrative features can overlap within the same content and must not be treated as separate shares that together represent the whole sample.
The initial chronology also shows how quickly the activity became concentrated. On August 13, Cadena SER reported more than 40,800 racist or xenophobic messages over approximately ten days after the Ceuta crisis, citing OBERAXE director Tomás Fernández Villazala. The reported pattern included a peak of roughly 6,500 messages on August 1 and a second rise to more than 4,000 messages on August 6, shortly after the border crossings.
High but uneven platform removal rates
Platforms removed 73% of the messages reported to them by OBERAXE in August. The disclosed removal rates varied considerably, reaching 100% on TikTok, 93% on X, 72% on Instagram, 68% on Facebook and only 8% on YouTube. These percentages apply specifically to messages reported by the observatory. They do not measure all hateful material that remained available, circulated through other channels or was never included in the official reporting process.
The full August total and the figure reported for the first ten days cover complementary rather than competing time frames. The first represents the month monitored through FARO, while the second captures the intense period immediately following the border episode. Taken together, they indicate both a rapid digital reaction and a monthly volume substantially above July’s level. Neither measure, however, reveals how many unique people produced or redistributed the detected content.
Offline hostility was also reported in Ceuta
By mid-September, El País reported that Ceuta was seeing an average of two demonstrations a day, with slogans becoming more hostile. The gatherings generally remained below 200 participants and frequently involved the same demonstrators. Their frequency therefore should not be interpreted as representing an equal number of separate groups or as a measure of opinion across the entire city, although it documents the visible persistence of tension within public spaces.
The same reporting documented hostility toward journalists and humanitarian workers, including physical aggression against media professionals and verbal abuse directed at aid personnel. It also reported that some shops restricted migrants’ access to toilets, electrical outlets or their premises. Separately, the Association of Moroccan Immigrant Workers in Spain condemned what it described as extreme violence after fires at makeshift camps and reported restrictions on access to essential humanitarian assistance, claims that remain attributed to the association.
Effects felt by Moroccan residents elsewhere
The reported impact extends beyond people who had recently arrived in Ceuta. Moroccan-born residents interviewed by El País in Málaga, Cádiz, Madrid and Catalonia described greater use of the label “invader,” more openly voiced xenophobic judgments and increased anxiety. They expressed fear that the Ceuta crisis would worsen their treatment in everyday life elsewhere in Spain. Their accounts demonstrate reported experiences and concerns, but they do not measure discrimination across the country as a whole.
Earlier official figures nonetheless provide a concerning national baseline. Spain’s Interior Ministry recorded 2,417 hate crimes and incidents in 2025, an increase of 23.6% from 2024. Racism and xenophobia formed the largest category, with 934 recorded cases. Because these statistics predate the July 2026 Ceuta crossings, they cannot demonstrate that the border episode caused a subsequent rise in officially recorded hate crime, but they establish the context in which the later surge occurred.
In 2025, Ceuta recorded 10.8 hate incidents per 100,000 inhabitants, while Moroccan nationals were the largest foreign-nationality victim group, accounting for 10% of all recorded victimizations. These figures also predate the 2026 crisis and cannot establish later causation. No comprehensive official post-crisis count of racist physical attacks specifically against Moroccans has been identified, making future police, prosecutorial and OBERAXE releases necessary to clarify whether offline incidents followed the documented digital surge.
