The Throne Fair

Abdelhakim Lamari — Alger, Algérie — 2026-09-05

On 31 July 2026, Morocco was celebrating the Feast of the Throne. A cruel coincidence: that same day, a stone's throw away, another fair was in full swing — at Ceuta, the Spanish enclave, where nothing was on sale: no carpets, no lanterns, only people fleeing. By the tens of thousands. Some call it a paradox; Moroccans call it their daily life.

For sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying. Here is a country that officially presents itself as "the best and most beautiful in the world" — "the Switzerland of Africa," no less, a phrase that must make the Swiss smile and economists weep — and whose citizens, on the day of their great national celebration, choose in droves to leave. Tens of thousands of people tried, those days, to reach two small Spanish enclaves — up to 80,000 entries recorded by some media outlets, with several thousand remaining in Ceuta to seek asylum. No one flees "the Switzerland of Africa" for a Sunday stroll. People flee it because they have been suffocating there — economically, socially, politically — for decades.

And here is the detail that kills, the one propaganda will never catch up with: among the fugitives was a man of 86. Eighty-six years old. At that age, you do not cross a border under tear gas for the love of adventure. You cross it because you have lost all hope in the country where you were born — and because you would rather end your days in a Spanish enclave of 18 km² than in "the most beautiful country in the world." Ask the palace's spin doctors: what slogan can answer an 86-year-old man who walks into exile on the day of the national holiday?

And what did the kingdom's media say that day? That "Algerian hands" had orchestrated the flight. Of course. When tens of thousands of your citizens vote with their feet on the day of your national holiday, it is obviously more comfortable to blame the neighbour than to look in the mirror. Morocco has made Algeria its all-purpose scapegoat: the Sahara, migration, the weather — and soon, no doubt, the unemployment rate. Such consistency deserves an award — the award for irresponsibility.

Meanwhile, the Spanish authorities are investigating and publishing reports — and they find no "Algerian hand." What they do find are realities Rabat refuses to see: destitution, despair, and a regime that prefers slogans to solutions. "The Switzerland of Africa" has one of the highest youth unemployment rates on the continent, and a monarchy that mistakes a national holiday for a communications operation.

So yes, let us mock — it is our right, and our duty. Let us mock the "Throne Fair," where power is paraded while the people parade at the gates of Ceuta. But let us never forget what matters: behind the farce lie tens of thousands of destinies — and an 86-year-old man who, that day, chose dignity. Dignity is not celebrated at the palace. It is won on the ground, far from the grandstands.