There’s not really a lot of point to Ceuta and Melilla, Spain’s two inhabited territories in North Africa: fine places as they no doubt must be. Ceuta is small at just 18.5km² and one can walk from one end of Melilla to the other in an hour of so (4.5kms long, 4kms wide).
Neither of them charge IVA, and furthermore, residents and businesses enjoy massive tax cuts, including a 60% reduction in personal income tax (IRPF) and major corporate tax reliefs. This represents hundreds of millions in tax revenue that Spain willingly forgives every year to keep the cities economically viable.
…and they don’t really produce anything at all, except occasional trouble.
But there are around 160,000 people living in the two enclaves, which have both been Spanish possessions for the last 530 years (Melilla) and 360 years (Ceuta). As Pedro Sánchez says, they are both españolísimo.
Although, for practical reasons, Spain is stuck with two difficult stepchildren that are both a huge financial and political burden.
The total combined economic burden to Spain of Ceuta and Melilla, says Google AI, for the 2025 financial period, including structural maintenance, military operations, and foregone tax revenue, is estimated to be between €1,100 million and €1,500 million. This year, with extra protection, subsidies and defence investment, it will be more.
We remember the virulent reaction of Spain in 2002 to the brief occupation of the deserted Spanish island of Perejil, just 250 metres off the Moroccan coast. Then, and on the other hand, and casting back to a couple of weeks before Franco’s death in 1975, there was King Hassan II’s ‘Green March’ which took the more or less uncontested control of the Spanish Sahara (with Washington’s tacit approval).
In politics, we have the Moroccans claiming the two enclaves (known to them as Sebta and Mellila) for their own. As happened in the last days of July, this claim can sometimes prove to be a major problem, exacerbated (or maybe encouraged) by Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu plus the usual suspects – Feijóo, Abascal and various nazi troublemakers.
Not that the Partido Popular or Vox want to lose the two cities – far from it. But there are political advantages to them both to go in with guns blazing. There were major protests outside every (PP/Vox) town hall in Spain last Wednesday (September 2) against the Government’s admittedly poor handling of the crisis, under the banner of the Federation of Municipalities and Provinces (FEMP), a right-leaning agency. I was in Granada that day and saw a large number of demonstrators heading towards the Plaza del Carmen, the town hall square, with many people wearing Spanish flags wrapped around their shoulders.
Indeed, the Ceuta ‘invasion’ (if I may quote Vox) has proven to be the biggest headache for Pedro Sánchez in this entire, complicated legislature. 
The Moroccans are backing down for the moment, having caused a huge problem – they don’t particularly want a right-wing government in Spain, and Sánchez is firmly not blaming them for the 72,000 that crossed the border on July 31st (no doubt for sound political reasons), yet the fresh threat of Felipe VI visiting Ceuta and Melilla in the coming weeks is certainly not going to be at all acceptable to King Mohammad VI’s government.
So, what is to be done with the 5,000 migrants currently causing problems in Ceuta? Some are Moroccan, some are minors and some are Sub-Saharans. In theory, the Moroccans should be processed before being allowed to stay or to be returned; the 1,200 minors, known dismissively as los menas, should be allowed to stay and sent to refuges on the mainland (although the regional authorities run by the PP don’t want them); while the Sub-Saharans can’t be returned from one foreign country to another foreign country (!), so must be checked before being allowed to stay or to be returned to their homeland. This would be following Spanish and EU law.
The Spanish Supreme Court must come in for some blame over these events, as it ruled in July this year that those crossing a frontier may be returned ‘en caliente’, but those arriving by sea must be processed. A ruling that could only have been considered among the Moroccan youth as practically an invitation.
It’s no doubt a lot easier to resolve the problem of 5,000 anxious migrants killing time in Ceuta than the alternative preferred by the Moroccans on the other side of the wall: to return 160,000 irate Spanish residents to the Peninsular.