Morocco Halts Passport Stamping for Melilla Residents at Border Crossing

The information was reported on Wednesday evening to El Faro de Melilla by Amín Azmani, head of Somos Melilla, stating that an acquaintance, holder of a permanent residence permit in Melilla, crossed the Beni Enzar border with his passport which was scanned, but not stamped. The news was later confirmed by other people who entered the autonomous city.

For now, no official information has been published on this subject and it is not known whether this is a temporary or permanent situation. A similar situation had been noted for several hours in Ceuta in October last year, the same source recalls. To verify if the measure concerns all the inhabitants of Melilla, the head of Somos Melilla went to Beni Enzar on Wednesday evening and was able to note that the passports were not stamped. However, Spaniards coming from the peninsula will continue to have their passports stamped, it is specified.

Sources from the NGO Gran Rif have also confirmed the information, pointing out that the action of stamping obliged many cross-border workers to regularly renew their passports which no longer had pages to receive the daily stamps when entering and leaving the autonomous city. But passport control continues, the same sources assure.

In addition to the slowness of the procedure, the renewal of a passport is expensive. The Nador Government Delegation has constantly received complaints about this. Several civil society organizations have campaigned for the removal of these stamps. If the measure is maintained, it would mean a return to the situation before the closure of the border in 2020, where passports were not stamped for Melilla residents.