India, Aug. 2 -- Ceuta, an autonomous city, sits on Morocco's northern coast. The Spanish government has said almost all of the migrants have since returned to Morocco, and at least 57 have died.

Faced with doubts as to how and why this was able to happen, the public was left with only footage and photographs: people swimming and climbing onto Ceuta's Tarajal beach, tens of thousands in a single day and night, scores dead.

With no facts or explanations to back them up, scenes like these land in the imagination first. And the imagination is where a country's attitude to migration is built.

The Ceuta border crossing undermines one of Spain's more flattering ideas about itself. After the long years of fascist dictatorship the country has ...