Ceuta’s hospitality industry is on the brink of collapse as a result of last month’s massive illegal migrant invasion of the Spanish enclave, local hoteliers warn.
The far-from-resolved invasion of Ceuta has plunged the city into a dramatic emergency marked by growing insecurity, surging crime, and warnings of a possible “sanitary catastrophe” by local healthcare professionals.
The embattled city’s hospitality and tourism industry has not been exempt from the dire consequences left by the late July events, when tens of thousands of migrants invaded Ceuta. According to estimates from the local Ceuta government, upwards of 10,000 migrants are believed to still remain inside the city following the chaotic events of last month.
Per El Faro de Ceuta, a local hospitality professionals and entrepreneur association declared the fear and insecurity has reduced the presence of locals across the exclave’s streets — limiting their consumption and severely affecting their establishments’ operations.
The local hoteliers are urgently demanding solutions from the Spanish central government that restore security to Ceuta, stressing that they find themselves unable to withstand the losses caused by “extraordinary circumstances linked to functions that fundamentally correspond to the State,” referring to the migrant invasion and its aftermath.
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El Español reports that local hoteliers have lost half of their usual restaurant clientele over the past weeks since the invasion. The outlet spoke with Gema Molina, a woman who has lived her whole life in Ceuta and who has been the owner of a local downtown restaurant over the past 15 years. She affirmed to the outlet that locals are now hesitant to go to a restaurant or club out of fear — a sentiment also shared by its owners who feel “abandoned” and not represented by the Spanish government.
In the case of her restaurant, Molina deviled to El Español, not as many migrants approach the locale throughout the day — but a completely different situation is experienced a night, when some of the migrants sleep outside and even “fight with sticks and other items.”
“My husband once tried to wake one of them up so he would move, but the man snapped at him and told him he didn’t have to leave,” she told El Español.
Molina reportedly explained that her and acquaintances in the hospitality sector have collectively lost over 100,000 euros over the past weeks. She emphasized that not even during the Coronavirus pandemic had she experienced such a “complicated blow” to her business.
“During the pandemic, politicians helped us. Now they’re trying to say that what we’re going through isn’t an invasion, that everything is safe, and that things don’t work that way,” Molina told El Español.
The restaurant owner explained that her daughter, who works as a security guard, was recently surrounded by a group of about ten migrants who started to tell her that she is “pretty,” demanding money and food from her.
“The only thing she told me is that she felt like a piece of meat,” Molina said.
Molina further denounced that restaurants have suffered attacks by migrants who “enter in packs” to ask for food and drinks — becoming hostile should the restaurant refuse to comply with their demands. In other instances, she told El Español, it is the clients who are harassed by the migrants into compliance instead.
“The problem with all this is that if you don’t give them anything, there’s a confrontation. But I’ve also found bags of their feces outside my restaurant, as well as countless puddles of urine,” she denounced.
“And I’m the one who has to clean it up. Imagine walking up to a business that has human feces outside. No one is going to want to go in,” she continued.
Despite the dire situation that she and her family has faced over the past weeks, Molina emphasized to El Español that she has lived all of her life in Ceita — and affirmed that she and her family has never thought about moving to mainland Spain.
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