On 1 August 2026, the US State Department did something it does rarely: it singled out one city inside a country for its own separate risk rating. Ceuta went to Level 3 — Reconsider Travel. The rest of Spain stayed at Level 2. If you have a trip to Spain booked, or you are just … Read more
At 19:49 on Friday 31 July 2026, the ground under Pozzuoli moved hard enough to crack a port, close two railway lines and send people running into the street in their pyjamas. The Naples earthquake registered magnitude 4.7. On paper that is a moderate tremor. In Campi Flegrei it was the strongest shock recorded since … Read more
On the evening of Wednesday 12 August 2026, the Moon will slide in front of the Sun and switch off the daylight across a narrow strip of Iceland and northern Spain. Everywhere else in Europe, the Sun will simply turn into a thin crescent hanging just above the horizon. This is the solar eclipse 2026, … Read more
The Ceuta crisis looked like a story about a fence, a court ruling and a smuggling network. Underneath it sits a much older and much bigger question: who governs a stretch of desert on the Atlantic coast that Spain walked away from fifty years ago. Western Sahara rarely makes headlines on its own — the … Read more
Ceuta, a tiny Spanish autonomous city on the North African coast, occupies one of the most geopolitically complex spots on Earth. Perched directly across the Strait of Gibraltar and sharing a 6.4-kilometer (4-mile) land border with Morocco, Ceuta—along with its sister city Melilla—represents the only physical land border between the European Union and the African … Read more
On 31 July 2026, Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni said Spain should be excluded from the Schengen area after tens of thousands of people crossed into Ceuta from Morocco. She called the images shocking and said Italy was ready to act, including by suspending the Schengen agreement with Spain. Searches for “Schengen” spiked immediately. The … Read more
In July 2026, Spain did two opposite things on the same fourteen-kilometre stretch of water. On 15 July, the fence at the Gibraltar frontier came down. Passport checks on the land border ended, and around 15,000 workers began crossing daily between La Línea and the Rock without stopping. Spanish officials called it the removal of … Read more
Updated 31 July 2026 with crossing distances, the two pressure points on the fence, and current Frontex route data. Look at a map of Spain and you will not find it. Look at a map of Morocco and you will find a small notch on the northern coast that Morocco does not control. That notch … Read more
Updated 8 August 2026: the confirmed death toll has risen to at least 100, Spain and Italy are locked in a genuine diplomatic standoff over Italy’s continued border checks, and a separate crisis has emerged over unaccompanied migrant children still in Ceuta. On 30 and 31 July 2026, tens of thousands of people crossed one … Read more
Update, July 27, 2026: The manhunt is over. Police shot and killed suspect Abdul Ballout on Sunday evening after he charged at officers with a bladed weapon. The original reporting on the attack itself remains below; the “How Did the Manhunt End?” section covers what’s new. A van tore through the crowd at Berlin’s Christopher … Read more