“It’s simplistic to say that Morocco should just have used force to stop them. That is to completely misunderstand this phenomenon,” he said. “Could Spain, seeing them coming, have done something to stop them simply using weapons and security forces? That’s not possible.”

For Cembrero, the Ceuta crisis is above all a human rights disaster, with a death toll that is likely to go up as authorities clear the area and attempt to identify bodies and contact families.