Ceuta Summit: What Vitoria would tell Sánchez about migration

The Prime Minister of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, likes to invoke international law. Imagine that one day, someone had finally responded to him. Not just anyone, but one of the founding fathers of international law. It happened just after the Ceuta incident, in July 2026, when tens of thousands people from Morocco surged into Ceuta, a tiny Spanish territory in Northern Africa. The incident caused diplomatic tensions with both Moroccan and European leaders. It was precisely the kind of case that Francisco de Vitoria (1483-1546) used to solve. Vitoria, a Dominican jurist who taught theology at Salamanca, in Renaissance Spain, was familiar with migration issues. He lived at the time of the discovery of the New World when tens of thousands of Spaniards crossed the Atlantic. He was worried about the massacres they perpetrated against the indigenous people and he then devoted a relectio to clarifying the rights of Indians and of Spaniards. A relectio was an official lecture attended by the entire…