Ceuta Considers Ferry Reduction to Manage Moroccan Expat Travel Surge

After analyzing the causes of the massive traffic jam recorded in Ceuta last weekend, where more than 40,000 Moroccans living abroad and 10,000 vehicles arrived in the city bound for Morocco, the president of the city, Juan Vivas, proposes to reduce the number of ferries arriving in Ceuta as part of this Marhaba Operation, which is breaking all records in terms of the flow of Moroccans living abroad.

Vivas said the Marhaba Operation needs to be "adjusted" to the capacity of the city, recalling that out of the 200 vehicles arriving in the city every hour, between Friday and Sunday, only 90 managed to cross the border, which resulted in a massive traffic jam in the waiting area.

Specifically, Vivas is asking to reduce by one-third the number of ships arriving in Ceuta per day. "If right now we are at 24 ferries, we should not record more than 18 coming from Algeciras. This is how we will put an end to the traffic jams we experienced last weekend with waiting times of up to ten hours," explained the president of Ceuta.

Vivas was keen to point out that he is not "questioning the controls that Morocco carries out in a sovereign manner," but he believes that the pace of arrival of vehicles in Ceuta must be proportional to the pace of departure to Morocco. The official also specified that the primary purpose of the waiting area is to avoid traffic jams at the border, and on this basis, a maximum waiting time of three hours was planned.