AN ABSOLUTE OVERFLOW OF WORK.

Friday in Murcia, Majorca and Alicante. The country is now the largest gateway for migrants crossing the Mediterranean to Europe, with 20,992 people landing on its shores so far this year, according to the International Organisation for Migration. Arrivals to Italy now trail Spain by almost 3,000 — a gap that just a week ago was 200.

On Friday the government announced $45 million for agencies dealing with the migratory challenge. Magdalena Valerio, minister for work, migration and social security, called for help from the EU and said that Madrid was worried by Thursday’s events in Ceuta, one of Spain’s two outposts in Morocco, where more than 600 migrants forced their way through the border fence.

Two Civil Guard unions also called for urgent assistance in the face of what they said were increasingly wellplanned incursions into the enclaves, Europe’s only land borders with Africa. Thursday’s forced entry was said by security forces to be of “unprecedented violence.”

Authorities and NGOs in Andalusia have been sounding the alarm over the surge in arrivals, noting that reception centres are saturated and migrants being forced to sleep in converted sports halls, on boats and in one case on a police station patio.

The Spanish have blamed the increase on the crackdown on the Mediterranean route from Libya to Italy, where the new populist government has barred rescue ships from docking.