Sánchez’s symbolic visit to Melilla highlights complex customs relations

Pedro Sánchez is set to make a highly symbolic visit to Melilla next Monday, where he will inaugurate the new university hospital a project announced nearly two decades ago and partially operational only recently. However, beyond healthcare, the visit underscores the sensitive customs issue central to trade between Morocco and the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla.

This will be the first time since the reopening of Melilla’s customs checkpoint with Morocco in January that a Spanish head of government visits the enclave. The resumption of trade, awaited for over five years, represented a concrete step in a "new phase" in bilateral relations following Spain's policy shift on Western Sahara in March 2022. This diplomatic move was intended to ease tensions between Rabat and Madrid. Yet, on the ground, customs operations remain partial, fragmented, and heavily influenced by Moroccan priorities.

Since Morocco unilaterally closed the commercial customs post in August 2018, Melilla lost a formal channel for trade with Morocco. The reopening in 2024 was welcomed as a sign of détente but came with restrictions that have drawn skepticism and frustration from local businesses.

“This is not a genuine customs operation,” said Enrique Alcoba, president of Melilla’s business confederation. He explained that current procedures are far from pre-2018 customs activity: “What exists now is what Morocco wants to impose customs duties limited to certain sectors, certain days, and capped volumes.” This reflects the local community’s frustration, forced to operate under a vague, one-sided, quota-driven framework, instead of the fully restored, fluid commercial border they expected.

This situation highlights the complexities of the ongoing "normalization" process between the two nations. Morocco, asserting greater territorial sovereignty, aims to thoroughly reshape trade modalities with Ceuta and Melilla historically seen as zones facilitating informal economies and smuggling. Rabat now favors controlled integration into its customs system, maintaining firm control over the pace and terms of border reopening.

For Madrid, Morocco’s approach is a delicate diplomatic test. By backing Morocco’s Sahara autonomy initiative in 2022, Sánchez aimed to secure migration flows, enhance security cooperation, and revive official trade routes. Three years on, the results are mixed: migration crises still spike irregularly, counterterrorism cooperation remains active, but commercial exchanges through the enclaves struggle to regain their previous smoothness.