CEUTA, Spain (AP) — Ceuta over the weekend no longer looked like a city on edge, but the events of the week were still on everyone’s minds.
Most of the 60,000 migrants who swam, scrambled and later charged into the tiny Spanish exclave in North Africa this week had walked back to Morocco by Sunday, while others tried to blend in and stay on. Spanish civil guard ships continued searching for migrant bodies in the waters near the stretch of urban beach that tens of thousand of migrants had breached days earlier.
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Escorted by the Spanish army, migrants who crossed into Spain return to Morocco from the Spanish enclave of Ceuta on Saturday, Aug. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Antonio Sempere)
Guardia Civil officers recover the body of a migrant from the water in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, Saturday, Aug. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Antonio Sempere)
Ceuta residents gather for a counterprotest against a rally by a far-right nationalist and racist movement in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, Saturday, Aug. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
Spanish far-right politician Alvise Pérez waves a Spanish flag while under police protection as Ceuta residents, not pictured, protest his presence in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, Saturday, Aug. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
Ceuta residents demonstrate against the arrival of Spanish far-right politician Alvise Pérez in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, Saturday, Aug. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
Shops in Ceuta reopened, and the usual blend of residents and tourists in the city of 84,000 were filling the open-air terraces, restaurants and cafes.
But the city that prides itself on being home to four cultures was still grappling with the aftermath of the border surge, with locals disagreeing on what caused it and who exactly is to blame.
At least 72 migrants died, including some who drowned and others who were killed in a stampede to cross a breakwater barrier, Spanish authorities said Sunday. The humanitarian crisis caused by the sudden rush of people has reignited a debate around immigration in Europe and beyond.
“It's not the young men's fault,” said Mohamad Abdelkader Driss, 44, a waiter at a fried fish restaurant in town. “If you open the border, of course everyone comes in, but the young men aren't to blame. The authorities are responsible.”
Some migrants who returned to Morocco described a border that was effectively open and said authorities did little as they watched thousands of people cross.
The unauthorized arrivals on Thursday and Friday of 50,000 to 60,000, mostly young men, swelled Ceuta's population by more than half. Abdelkader lamented what happened, but said that those who breached the border behaved relatively well.
“It could have been much worse,” he said.
Over the weekend, far-right, anti-immigrant Spanish politicians and well-known right-wing influencers descended on the city, sparking counterprotests that included members of the Spanish city's large Muslim population, many of whom are of Moroccan descent.
Alvise Pérez, a far-right Spanish politician and member of the European Parliament, called on Saturday evening for migrants to be expelled as he faced an angry crowd of rival protesters. Pérez eventually had to shelter in a bar as residents banged on the windows, until police escorted him away.
Among the counterprotesters on Saturday was 20-year-old Ceuta resident and student Noor Ahmed. She denounced the protest and presence of figures like Pérez in her city as opportunistic.
“They just want to take advantage of the humanitarian crisis Ceuta is currently experiencing,” Ahmed said.
Santiago Abascal, the leader of the far-right Vox party, visited Ceuta on Sunday, slamming the Spanish government for the surge in migrant arrivals, which he called “an invasion.”
“The frontiers of Ceuta and Melilla are the walls of our home and homeland, and they are not being protected by a corrupt and traitorous government,” he said.
Some locals, even acknowledging Ceuta's population of Christians, Muslims, Jews and Hindus that normally live in relative harmony, worried about what the week revealed about the city.
Eva Barrientos, a resident of Ceuta who works at a logistics company, came to the protest on Saturday evening to see what Pérez and the other right-wing figures had to say. She was confident that something similar would happen again and questioned the loyalty that some of Ceuta's foreign-born residents had to Spain.
“In Ceuta, we have always lived together. We have four cultures living very well, without any problems,” she said. “But the only thing we are realizing now is that there is an enemy within.”
And she accused some foreign-born residents of having more loyalty to Morocco than the country in which they lived.
Pope Leo XIV on Sunday said he was “following with concern the alarming situation in Ceuta, asking God … that solutions of peace, stability and justice may be found.”
Migration has been one of Pope Leo’s priorities, which he underlined during a recent visit to the Canary Islands in Spain, one of Europe’s main migrant entry ports.
Escorted by the Spanish army, migrants who crossed into Spain return to Morocco from the Spanish enclave of Ceuta on Saturday, Aug. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Antonio Sempere)
Guardia Civil officers recover the body of a migrant from the water in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, Saturday, Aug. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Antonio Sempere)
Ceuta residents gather for a counterprotest against a rally by a far-right nationalist and racist movement in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, Saturday, Aug. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
Spanish far-right politician Alvise Pérez waves a Spanish flag while under police protection as Ceuta residents, not pictured, protest his presence in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, Saturday, Aug. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
Ceuta residents demonstrate against the arrival of Spanish far-right politician Alvise Pérez in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, Saturday, Aug. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
LACANAU, France (AP) — Europe’s wildfire crisis fractured along starkly different fronts Sunday: gale-force winds drove flames deeper into the Athens region and forced fresh evacuations, France guarded a still-burning scar four times the size of Paris against renewed spread, and Spain’s major fires finally stopped advancing.
The center of immediate danger was Greece. Flames spread through western Attica, the capital's surrounding region, threatening villages and an industrial district outside Megara as violent gusts prevented firefighting aircraft from collecting water from the sea.
Earlier this week, two firefighters died battling a blaze on Crete, while a third was killed in a separate fire in the Peloponnese.
But the easing emergency farther west offered little sense of an ending. France’s largest wildfire remained contained after 224,000 people were forced to flee in what may have been the largest civilian evacuation outside wartime. Active pockets still burned across 420 square kilometers (162 square miles) of devastated forest, thousands remained unable to return home, and nearly 3,000 firefighters were deployed against that blaze and a second, still-uncontained fire in Provence.
Fires in France and Spain alone have driven roughly a third of a million people from homes and vacation sites, emptied communities at the height of the European summer and stretched firefighters, aircraft and emergency services across simultaneous disasters.
Europe entered 2026 after its worst wildfire year on record, when more than 10,000 square kilometers (3,860 square miles) burned. Wildfires cause estimated economic losses of about 2 billion euros in a typical year, according to the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre.
The crisis is unfolding on the world’s fastest-warming continent. Europe has warmed at more than twice the global average since the 1980s, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
Human-caused climate change doubled the likelihood of the extreme fire conditions that fueled the French blazes this year, scientists at World Weather Attribution calculated in a rapid analysis while the fires were still burning.
Nearly 500 firefighters and 23 aircraft were deployed, but gale-force winds fanned the fire while crippling the response. The winds drove flames through dry forest and made it impossible for some aircraft to descend to the sea for water.
Smoke rose over the mountains as evacuation orders were issued for the communities of Kandili, Agia Skepi and Toutouli. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis was briefed on the operation, with authorities particularly concerned about Porto Germeno, a seaside community on the Gulf of Corinth.
Elsewhere, flames burned dangerously close to homes on Kefalonia, forcing evacuations from inland villages as aircraft made water drops over the Ionian tourist island. On the mainland, nearly 50 firefighters, a specialist wildfire unit, 16 engines and a helicopter battled another blaze near Nea Tenedos in Halkidiki.
The fire began Friday near Agios Vasileios before sweeping toward Porto Germeno and into the forested mountains west of Athens.
Firefighters evacuated 254 people by sea from Agios Vasileios on Friday and another 12 from Porto Germeno on Saturday — an escape route of last resort in coastal communities where fire and smoke can cut the few roads out.
Wildfire meteorologist Theodore Giannaros estimated Saturday that the blaze had affected 40 to 50 square kilometers (15 to 19 square miles), though authorities had not issued an official figure.
“A pristine forest, a paradise, was surrendered to the hands of the fire,” local farmer Minas Tzortzanis said Saturday. “There are no words to explain what has happened. Destruction. Total destruction.”
The danger carried grim resonance in Greece. In 2018, a wind-driven wildfire trapped residents in the seaside community of Mati, east of Athens, killing 104 people in Europe’s deadliest wildfire this century.
In southwestern France, the Gironde megafire remained contained Sunday but was still burning after scorching 420 square kilometers (162 square miles) of forest in just 10 days.
“The fire is now fixed, which does not mean that the fire is extinguished,” the Gironde prefecture said Sunday, using the French firefighting term for a blaze whose advance has been stopped and whose perimeter has been contained.
The region remained under France’s highest red forest-fire alert. Dry conditions and soaring temperatures around Bordeaux, combined with afternoon winds, created a continued risk of renewed flames.
In Le Porge, one of the communities hardest hit, local officials said about 150 homes were destroyed.
Mechanic Matthieu Plessis returned Saturday to the ruins of a home that had been in his family for seven generations.
“There are places I don’t even recognize anymore,” he said. “You don’t even know what was here anymore, or who lived where.”
Additional firefighters from Ukraine, Lithuania and French Polynesia were expected Sunday and Monday to reinforce the operation.
Hundreds of kilometers away, nearly 1,500 firefighters were battling a separate fire in the southeastern Var department that tore through roughly 18 square kilometers (7 square miles) in little more than a day.
Authorities said the fire in the Gros Bessillon hills was stabilized Sunday morning, meaning its perimeter had not expanded overnight. But unlike the Gironde fire, it had not yet been declared contained.
Firefighting aircraft supported crews working to keep the flames away from villages among the vineyards, olive groves and wooded hills of the region known as Green Provence.
About 2,500 people were evacuated as the fire threatened communities.
The blaze was the fourth major fire to strike the central Var since July 19. A separate, smaller fire near Brignoles earlier in the week forced Hollywood actor George Clooney and his family, along with about 700 other residents, to evacuate before it was brought under control.
Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said France’s wildfires were generally under control but cautioned that conditions remained highly changeable.
He also announced that a national coordinator attached to the prime minister’s office would oversee reconstruction in fire-ravaged areas.
More than 1,170 square kilometers (452 square miles) have burned across France since the beginning of the year.
Spain’s major fires — part of a season that has killed at least 13 people, produced the country’s largest recorded wildfire and prompted a national emergency — were no longer advancing Sunday.
In Zamora province near the Portuguese border, more than 20 ground and aerial units remained deployed around the Fermoselle fire, maintaining its perimeter and guarding against flare-ups in the rugged Arribes del Duero landscape. Most evacuees had returned home, according to local media.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has called for a national pact to confront wildfires, warning that climate change is making them more destructive.
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Adamson reported from Paris. Michael Varaklas in Megara, Greece contributed to this report
A firefighting helicopter drops water over a smoke-filled forest during a wildfire near Porto Germeno, northwest of Athens, Greece, Sunday, Aug. 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Michael Varaklas)
A firefighting helicopter drops water over a smoke-filled forest during a wildfire near Porto Germeno, northwest of Athens, Greece, Sunday, Aug. 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Michael Varaklas)
An Airbus helicopter lets a Bambi Bucket full of water go over a firezone, near Blagon, southwestern France, Friday, July 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Baz Ratner)
A firefighting helicopter releases water over a wildfire near Correns, southeastern France, Saturday, Aug. 1, 2026. (Clement Mahoudeau/Pool Photo via AP)
The light flows through a charred forest near Ares, during wildfires in southwestern France, Thursday, July 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Baz Ratner)
An aerial view of a homes burned by wildfires in Le Porge, southwestern France, Saturday, Aug. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Nicolas Garriga)
A firefighter walks through a charred forest near Blagon, during wildfires, southwestern France, Friday, July 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Baz Ratner)
