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Over the last two months, two events have shaken the political landscape in Spain. First came the illegal crossing of almost 80,000 people from Morocco into Ceuta. Second was the eviction of an 87-year-old woman from the apartment she had lived in since age 17. There is a clear connection between the two that points to narrative management.
I want to explain why I am returning to Spain, and I apologize if the focus feels repetitive. When we try to make sense of the endless news cycle, we often retreat into grand theories: geopolitical maneuvers, economic roadmaps, systemic control, or narrative engineering. These frameworks are necessary, but it is only in the granular details that we see how they actually work — if they work at all.
We could apply this same principle — as we often do at Naked Capitalism — to many other fronts: the war on Iran, the Japanese stock market, or the upcoming Brazilian elections. But I have been tracking Spain closely, and its current political friction makes it an ideal case study.
A brief disclaimer: we are dealing with informed hypotheses here. For reasons that will be obvious, they are impossible to prove directly. Just as there is no declassified memo proving Western intelligence orchestrated the 2014 Euromaidan, we must rely on the Roman legal maxim: cui bono? (who benefits?).
At the end of July, roughly 80,000 people crossed irregularly from Morocco into Ceuta, a Spanish autonomous enclave in North Africa. It was the largest single crossing in the border’s history, triggering a humanitarian emergency in a city whose total population is itself only around 80,000.
Official narratives framed the surge as spontaneous, but the reality was anything but. The event was organized across social media and, at minimum, permitted — if not actively encouraged — by Moroccan authorities. Even if it began with an organic spark, authorities could have stopped it early on. They chose not to.
Why? Several plausible explanations emerge. It benefited Morocco, which sought leverage against Madrid after Spain moved to closer ties with Algeria, while simultaneously testing the enclave’s defenses. It benefited NATO planners eyeing tighter security around the Strait of Gibraltar. And it benefited Washington, where officials may have wanted to discipline a Spanish administration that refuses to toe the line. Add Israel to the mix — whose leadership harbors deep grievances against Madrid — and you have three coordinated allies with the intelligence capabilities to either trigger or neutralize such an event.
In my view, these motivations likely converged around a single objective: destabilizing the Spanish government, degrading its public standing, and forcing early elections.
Spain’s governing coalition pairs centrist social democrats (socialist in brand more than ideology) with the broader left. In ordinary times, this would cause little friction with allies, provided Madrid kept its focus domestic, complied with Brussels, and remained an obedient NATO member. Instead, the government broke ranks in several high-profile arenas.
Madrid took a sharp diplomatic stance against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, lobbying EU partners to enact concrete sanctions. The administration rejected demands, made by Donald Trump, for NATO allies to raise defense spending to 5% of GDP and also Madrid publicly opposed military escalation against Iran.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez (his official title is President but his role is of a PM) has cultivated a profile as an international champion of modern Western social democracy, advocating multilateralism, international law, and closer ties with the Global South. For instance, Barcelona recently hosted the IV Summit in Defence of Democracy, drawing prominent center-left figures from across the globe (an event partly sponsored by the Open Society Foundations, with Alexander Soros praising Sánchez in person).
The working hypothesis is straightforward: Sánchez had become an unpredictable nuisance on the international stage while actively building a profile as an alternative global leader on the left. The Ceuta border crisis provided the shock therapy needed to push him toward the exit.
For the strategy to work, however, the Spanish right needed to run with the ball. They gladly obliged. Framing 80,000 border crossers as an “invasion” and an existential threat was straightforward culture-war fodder. The right dominated the airwaves with this framing for two months, while the government’s response was slow, defensive, and erratic.
Caught flat-footed, the Sánchez administration entered damage-control mode. Compounded by legal investigations into the premier’s inner circle (driven by conservative and pro-Israel lobbies), polling showed the left on track to lose power to a right/far-right coalition. They desperately needed a narrative counter-offensive.
The eviction of an 87-year-old tenant from her lifelong home offered that exact lifeline. I am not suggesting the government engineered the eviction — a private legal dispute that had dragged on for over five years. But the state certainly possessed the tools to intervene quietly. Indeed, the corporate landlord has since backed down and offered her a workable lease.
The central government could have resolved the case behind closed doors without a media circus. Instead, they allowed the drama to play out publicly because the outrage worked in their political favor.
The administration needed to displace the Ceuta story, which was consolidating right-wing momentum. Housing provided the perfect counterweight. While they could not pin the eviction directly on the opposition, it allowed them to shift the villain of the story from “uncontrolled borders” to “unregulated vulture funds.”
Housing is already an acute crisis across Spain. The political left has long built its identity on tenant advocacy, tracing current pressures back to 2013, when the conservative Partido Popular (PP) granted aggressive tax exemptions to foreign real estate funds. Recent allegations that a prominent PP regional leader was going to benefit from luxury real estate purchased with public funds only sharpened this contrast.
From the government’s perspective, the pivot worked. Over the past week, Ceuta has slipped from the front pages. The administration is back on comfortable terrain as defenders of vulnerable tenants. Encampments reminiscent of the 2011 15-M movement have reappeared in major plazas. While the demonstrators criticize housing policy generally, their base consists of young, left-leaning urbanites whose votes ultimately flow back to the coalition. A rival left-wing mobilization that presents an alternative to the right’s momentum.
This is modern narrative management in action. On one side, conservative nationalism uses the border to rally support for securitization to gain political momentum. On the other hand, social democracy leverages housing insecurity to revive its base. Both camps rely on identical media mechanics.
Both factions are responding to the same polarizing current — a zeitgeist where genuine public interest and civil liberty are the first casualties.
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