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Tens of thousands of people took to the streets across Spain to protest the government’s handling of a mass crossing of migrants into Spain in July.
Authorities say 50,000 protesters were on the streets in Madrid alone, furious at Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez as the migrant crisis in Spain’s North African city of Ceuta continues.
Violence continued for hours after the major protests ended, with gunshots and explosions audible throughout the night on Wednesday.
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The protesters bore signs reading, “A united Ceuta will never be defeated,” “Sánchez to prison,” and “Invaders — go home!”
Spain is still dealing with the fallout after over 70,000 foreign migrants surged across its border from neighboring Morocco in late July.
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Thousands of those migrants remain in Spanish territory even now.
“What happened to us was not a migratory crisis,” Ceuta’s regional leader, Juan Jesús Vivas, said Wednesday. “What happened was the violation of Spain’s territorial integrity.”
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The protests came days after Ceuta residents tore down and burned makeshift migrant shelters found in their city.
Demonstrators carrying Spanish flags moved toward beachside migrant camps last week, destroying shelters and setting fires as police attempted to keep protesters and migrants apart, according to Spain’s public broadcaster RTVE and news agency EFE.
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Meanwhile, Sanchez has blamed Russia and Israel for amplifying the migrant crisis via social media, saying the July surge across the border was due to a misinterpretation of a Spanish Supreme Court ruling.
Sánchez told radio station SER that research by the European Union’s diplomatic service, the European External Action Service, indicated Russian and Israeli networks had participated in spreading disinformation alongside far-right networks, Reuters reported Aug. 31.
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“Without facts, without materials backed up by numbers, dates, names, there is simply nothing to talk about,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova told reporters.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar accused Sánchez of “lying shamelessly,” and said in a post on X that the Spanish leader was attempting to divert attention from domestic policy failures.
Fox News’ Efrat Lachter and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
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