Newtral

Report September 2026

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Crisis 2025
[Note: Signatories are requested to provide information relevant to their particular response to the threats and challenges they observed on their service(s). They ensure that the information below provides an accurate and complete report of their relevant actions. As operational responses to crisis/election situations can vary from service to service, an absence of information should not be considered a priori a shortfall in the way a particular service has responded. Impact metrics are accurate to the best of signatories’ abilities to measure them].
Threats observed or anticipated
Crisis of immigration in Ceuta (August 2026)

Since the onset of the migration-related crisis in Ceuta in August 2026, Newtral has observed a marked escalation in coordinated disinformation activity targeting the situation. To date, Newtral has identified and reported through the Code's Rapid Response System (RRS) more than 70 pieces of false or misleading content related to the Ceuta crisis, using new and also established communication channels through which Newtral continuously reports to the EFCSN.  


Primary threats identified include:

  • Decontextualized and falsely attributed violent content: systematic circulation of violent videos and images, often unrelated to the current events or originating from other locations and time periods, deliberately presented as depicting the situation in Ceuta in order to amplify fear and social tension.
  • False or misleading claims about official entities: a recurring pattern of fabricated statements, decisions, or positions falsely attributed to official bodies, including the United Nations and the governments of Morocco, Ceuta and Spain, aimed at undermining trust in institutional responses and fuelling confusion around the management of the crisis.

This event has generated a significant spike in Newtral's verification workload, given both the volume and the speed at which manipulated content has spread across platforms. Notably, in addition to Spanish-language content, Newtral has also identified and reported disinformation circulating in Arabic — a language outside its usual working scope — when such content was detected, in order to contribute to broader awareness and cross-lingual monitoring of the crisis within the network.

Newtral considers the risk of continued disinformation around Ceuta to remain elevated in the near term, given the sensitivity of the topic, its cross-border dimension, and the demonstrated willingness of malicious actors to exploit the crisis for political and social polarisation purposes.


Mitigations in place

Newtral implemented comprehensive countermeasures to address the Ceuta disinformation crisis through systematic debunking of the false and misleading narratives identified. Our response combined immediate fact-checking of viral, decontextualized content with continuous reporting to platforms via the EFCSN's Rapid Response System (RRS).

  • Geolocation analysis: Newtral geolocated viral videos to establish their true origin. This method disproved, for example, footage of car burnings and violent unrest falsely attributed to Ceuta and Melilla, which was in fact recorded during unrelated disturbances in Nador, Morocco, on the other side of the border.
  • Temporal verification and reverse image/video search: Newtral traced the original publication dates of recirculated footage, identifying content falsely presented as current — including images from Libya dating back to 2023 that were misrepresented as a "mass wave of migrants" or an "invasion of Europe."
  • Source verification with official bodies: Newtral contacted relevant authorities directly to confirm or deny disputed claims, including Interior Ministry sources and the Government Delegation in Ceuta (to confirm a fabricated official communiqué on migrant transfers was not authentic), the Guardia Civil, and humanitarian NGOs operating on the ground.
  • Fact-checking of institutional misattribution: Newtral debunked false claims attributed to international and foreign institutions, such as unfounded assertions that the UN classifies Ceuta and Melilla as "colonies" pending transfer to Morocco, and unverified statements attributed to Moroccan security officials regarding a purported invasion threat.
  • Multichannel detection and response: In addition to open-source social media monitoring, Newtral used its WhatsApp verification channel to identify and respond to disinformation queries submitted directly by the public.


To date, this work has resulted in the verification of more than 70 pieces of Ceuta-related disinformation, each documented and reported through the RRS with detailed evidence of true origin, timeline and, where relevant, institutional confirmation, enabling rapid and evidence-based flagging to platform signatories.