King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia kicked off their first visit to Ceuta on Tuesday in a show of solidarity with residents of the Spanish city in North Africa as they grapple with a migration crisis that has strained relations with Morocco.
The royal couple will then travel to Melilla, Spain’s other North African exclave, on Wednesday. It will be the first visit by a Spanish monarch to the two cities since Felipe’s father, Juan Carlos I, toured them in 2007.
Their visit comes after about 80,000 migrants crossed Ceuta’s border in July, with more than 140 people dying.
While most of the people who pushed across the frontier quickly returned, thousands still remain in the Spanish city of 84,000 residents perched on the Mediterranean Sea. It’s unknown how many remain, though the mayor has estimated that there are still as many as 15,000.
Their presence has become a source of social tension in Ceuta and a political issue across Spain, where opposition parties hope to use migration concerns to unseat the progressive government in elections next month.