Fighting Disinformation about Ceuta when I really should be in bed
Just before going to sleep last night, I made the mistake of logging onto Twitter (X. Whatever). This is a stupid thing to do at 2am (or any time, quite frankly) and I have nobody to blame but myself.
I soon came across this tweet by the UK’s Far Right poster boy, Tommy Robinson:
Had the post come from a credible source then I may have been inclined to believe it. As it had come from lying gobshite Tommy Robinson, however, my bullshit detector was going haywire.
Despite being tired, I decided to investigate.
Looking at the video, I could see that it had originated from an account registered in Valladolid, Spain by somebody going by the name of Adrián Del Val García:
Visible at the bottom of the video was something written in Spanish:
Here’s the English translation:
Residents of Torre del Tarajal complain about noise in the early hours of the morning...
But wait, I thought this video was about Moroccans raping women?
While we can forgive Tommy Robinson for not being able to read Spanish — he can barely read English — the fact that a Spanish account would post this video with such a controversial caption — The screams of the women as they are raped in Ceuta — when it says right there on the video in their very own language that it’s actually about residents complaining about noise tells me that Mr Adrián Del Val García knew exactly what he was doing when he clicked “post”.
This wasn’t an innocent case of misinformation.
This was blatant disinformation.
Why did I have to go on Twitter before bed?!
Using reverse image searches and the text available on the video, I tracked down the original story to the website of El Faro Ceuta, the oldest daily newspaper in Ceuta.
The article was published on August 16th, 2026, and the headline reads:
Residents of Torre del Tarajal endure “shouts and insults” after the occupation of the Príncipe Felipe school
You can find the link here, but in summary, the article reports that residents of Torre del Tarajal in Ceuta say their quality of life has deteriorated since the Príncipe Felipe school was converted into a temporary reception centre for underage girls who entered Ceuta from Morocco. Residents complain of frequent shouting, insults and disturbances during the early hours, and say some girls have escaped by climbing the school wall and entered nearby apartment buildings. They are calling on authorities to act urgently, stressing that they are not opposed to the girls themselves but want safety, security and peace for both the residents and the minors.
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The article includes a 90-second video of kids running about at night, laughing and joking and causing minor mischief. It’s from this video that somebody — and I’m not naming any names MR ADRIÁN DEL VAL GARCÍA! — cut out a deliberately misleading clip of girls screaming and posted it on Twitter along with their unhinged caption.
And now this thing was spreading like wildfire.
During the short time I’d been tracing the origins of the story, the video had been shared repeatedly, especially across Spanish-speaking Twitter. It was even reposted by La Derecha Diario (The Daily Right), an Argentinean online newspaper with over 600k followers. Good work guys. True journalism right there.
It wasn’t long before a Spanish-speaking user called Mr. Jones (no relation to Alex, although they clearly have a lot in common) with over 55k followers reposted the video, albeit with El Faro Ceuta’s caption conveniently removed:
Mr Jones has posted approximately 171,600 times (at the time of writing) in the last seven years. That’s 2042 posts a month. 68 posts per day. Nearly 3 tweets per hour, every hour for over seven years! And I thought I needed to get a life!
Mr Jones KNEW that this video didn’t contain “the sound of a rape in Ceuta”, but hey, don’t let the truth get in the way of a good piece of hate-mongering, right?
I suppose I have to give him some credit for being smart enough to remove the caption. Then again, given how rapidly Tommy and Adrián’s versions of the video were spreading, it didn’t really seem to matter one way or another. People weren’t sharing it because it was the truth. People were sharing it because they wanted it to be the truth (which is pretty fucked up when you think about it) and no amount of proof was going to change that.
But even though it was 2:30am, I had to try.
From 2:38am to 3:17am, I replied to 15 posts with the following tweet (or some various thereof):
My favourite post was this one:
“Probably during a rape”?!? Amazing work there, Sherlock.
Finally, at 3:30am, I closed my laptop and went to bed, safe in the knowledge that I had single-handedly saved the world from the destructive forces of disinformation. You’re welcome.
By the time I woke up this morning, groggy and regretful, the video was all over Twitter. Aside from a handful of likes, nobody had even acknowledged my attempts to put the record straight. Which I think you’ll agree is just downright rude.
Still, undeterred, I proceeded to reply to another 35 posts before I finally stopped screaming into the void. After all, Tommy Robinson has over 2 million followers, La Derecha Diario has over 600k, Mr Jones has over 52k (despite tweeting more than anybody. Poor guy) and I have zero. That’s right. Not even my mum follows me, so who’s going to listen?
Even if I had more followers than all of the above put together, it wouldn’t make a difference because the people who perpetuate these false narratives know what they’re doing. They don’t care that they’re spreading lies. On the contrary, the lies are the point.
But still, you have to try. And wait, what’s this? Somebody finally replied to one of my posts!
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what winning looks like.
