The Conversation: How the Ceuta border crossing incident immediately played into the hands of Spain’s far right

Kit Johnson blogged about the recent migration crisis in the Spanish territory of Cueta. Deniz Torcu for The Conversation offers some background: "The images emerging from Ceuta have shoved that aside, instilling a harder register. Words like `invasion', `war', `flood' and `control' now predominate across public statements and social media." Sound familiar? "It is estimated that more than 50,000 migrants crossed entered the small Spanish enclave of Ceuta in the course of a single day after the border effectively collapsed. Ceuta, an autonomous city, sits on Morocco’s northern coast. The Spanish government has said almost all of the migrants have since returned to Morocco, and at least 57 have died."

The aftermath? Concern with the deaths? Humanitarian responses? No, as Torcu writes, conservatives are poised to pounce on the crisis to push for tougher immigration enforcement. "The optics are a gift for Europe’s far right, and they know precisely what to do with it. They can lose every argument about the real numbers and still come out ahead, because their aim is to make the story of a welcoming Spain look foolish. In the absence of any other information, videos and images do a lot of that work for free."