Since July 30 and 31, when some 80,000 people entered Ceuta, the streets leading to the Loma Margarita facilities in the western part of the city have become a vivid summary of all the wars, famines, and fundamentalist groups battering the Sahel, the belt of countries stretching from the Sahara to the Red Sea where unimaginable tragedies unfold.

Lying on the sidewalks, staring at their cellphones, or wandering aimlessly, these teenagers pass the hours like soldiers who were spared from having to carry a weapon in Mali. Others fled jihadist groups in Niger, and still others simply ran out of food when armed groups in Burkina Faso doused the entire village’s vegetable gardens with glyphosate to starve them to death. If there is any crisis left without a face, it can be found at the gates of the Temporary Immigrant Shelter (CETI), where more children from Chad, Mauritania, or Sudan spend their days. After many months of hardship, they all sleep in a bed and eat three meals a day.

Loma Margarita is a plateau owned by the Spanish army where huge olive-green tents have been set up to house 1,100 people. After days of chaos for migrants and staff, a measure of order has finally returned to the site, guarded inside by a private security firm and outside by a group of legionnaires.

Clinging to the fence, Abdallah, 21, says that returning to Sudan would mean having to “integrate into an armed group.” His friend, 17, says he left Sudan three months ago but is happy because he will be able to “legalize his situation and tell someone what is happening in his country,” he explains in fluent English. The youngest of the group, 15, has had an infected ankle wound for 25 days. He is reluctant to speak and only shows a photo on his phone of his mother’s cousin living in Madrid wearing a Spain national team shirt. “In Morocco we lived like dogs, but they told us here we would have an interview to get papers. If they take me to Sudan, they would end up killing me,” Abdallah says. Here they not only sleep in a bed, but can charge their phones and treat wounds.

By rough estimates, of the 5,000 young people still roaming the city of Ceuta, between 1,100 and 1,500 are sub-Saharan Africans, housed mainly in two centers. According to the refugee NGO Accem, the police have begun interviews to determine who is eligible to apply for asylum. The first stage of the process, however, took place much earlier when authorities separated, on one hand, women and girls into a safe space to prevent sexual abuse; on another, sub-Saharan Africans into other facilities; and, finally, Moroccans. A couple of Algerians, however, prefer to keep sleeping on the beach because they feel they do not fit into any of the three spaces.

Everyone sleeping at Loma Margarita “are men aged between 18 and 35,” Accem, the organization contracted by the government to manage the situation, says. Most had been waiting in northern Morocco for a chance to cross into Spain when on July 31 they joined the caravan heading to the border. “The police told us to go by sea,” one recalls of that Thursday. It is possible to come and go freely from the Loma Margarita shelter, but during meal shifts the facility’s gates are closed to organize distributions. On El Trampolín beach, Mohamed Camara from Guinea-Conakry waits for the daily food distribution to begin. Camara is from the Siguizin region, known for its gold mines. At just 20, “most of my friends were seized for forced labor in the mines,” he says in French. As of this week, police have his name and he can begin the procedures to apply for asylum.

The Sahel is a semi-arid belt about 3,670 miles long, situated between the Sahara desert and the tropical savannas, from the Atlantic to the Red Sea. The region includes, according to the UN, Senegal, Gambia, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, northern Nigeria and Cameroon, Chad, Sudan, South Sudan and Eritrea — in other words, 400 million inhabitants across 12 countries. The government initially said everyone who entered Spain irregularly would be sent back, but the obligation to process asylum claims and laws regarding the return of minors makes that impossible. In Spain last year a total of 75,275 favorable resolutions for international protection and humanitarian statuses were approved, and applications originating from the Sahel top the lists, with approval rates close to 100%.

On the road that climbs past the equestrian center and leads to the CETI, a young man from Mali passes the time sitting with his back against the wall. Omar’s head rests on his outstretched legs. He doesn’t speak or play with his phone. He just stares into the distance and runs his hand over his companion’s head. Omar and Ahmed recount jihadist kidnappings that make a normal life impossible. After a while, they acknowledge they are a couple, and that is another reason they cannot go back.

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There are strong indications that people are thinking less and less, and that many now consider a 30-second video too long. But there is also evidence that more people are playing chess than ever before, using it as an educational tool and a form of mental exercise (an approach supported by a growing body of research).

Among its devotees are high-profile figures such as Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, tennis player Carlos Alcaraz, comedian David Broncano and soccer players Erling Haaland and Unai Simón. It serves as a source of inspiration in professional sport, for figures such as Pep Guardiola and Ernesto Valverde, and in the arts, for creators ranging from Arturo Pérez-Reverte to Humphrey Bogart, Stanley Kubrick and Miloš Forman. And at least tens of millions of people play it online every month. Why does chess continue to captivate people 15 centuries after the beginning of its documented history?

“There’s something hypnotic about it.” Or: “It’s like a magnet.” “There’s something magical here.” “I don’t know how to play, but the atmosphere is captivating.” These were some of the remarks heard on May 2 at Matadero Madrid, the cultural venue that hosted EL PAÍS’s 50th-anniversary festival. Chess holds a unique place at the newspaper: it is the only column that has appeared every single day for 50 years. Spanish-Iranian woman grandmaster Sara Khadem took on 20 opponents in a simultaneous exhibition after an interview with this reporter. Afterward, only soft background music could be heard, yet many spectators stayed there for more than two hours.

Iran, then known as Persia, served as the bridge between sixth-century India and the court of Baghdad in the seventh century, allowing the Arabs to bring chess to al-Andalus in the eighth and quickly spread it across the Iberian Peninsula, as recently highlighted in an exhibition at Valladolid’s National Sculpture Museum exploring the cultural and artistic journey of chess through history. King Alfonso X of Castile, known as “the Wise,” made it clear in his remarkable Book of Chess, Dice and Tables (1283) that the game was played by Muslims, Jews and Christians alike, by men, women and children.

Nearly two centuries later, around 1475 and probably in Valencia, the queen became the most powerful piece on the board. Spaniards then exported the modern version of chess to the Americas and much of Europe, while cleric Ruy López, sponsored by Philip II of Spain, came to be recognized as the game’s first unofficial champion in the mid-16th century.

Almost five centuries later, the strongest chess player is no longer human. It calculates millions of moves per second and can run on a cellphone. Yet chess as a sport is still as meaningful as ever because beauty in chess is often born from imperfection: one player makes a mistake, the other punishes it brilliantly, and together they create a work of art, much like the 570 masterpieces featured in this newspaper’s El Rincón de los Inmortales (Immortals Corner) video series, published every Monday.

Over-the-board tournaments continue to grow. The International Chess Federation (FIDE) has 203 member federations, more than any international sports body except those governing soccer, athletics and basketball. But online chess is expanding even faster. Chess.com reports more than 250 million user accounts. Counting only those who play at least once a month, and adding other major platforms such as Lichess and Play Chess, the total reaches tens of millions.

The boom was turbocharged by the pandemic and the global success of The Queen’s Gambit. Netflix has since added two more chess-themed series: Queen of Chess, about Judit Polgár, the only woman ever to rank among the world’s top 10 players, and Chess Mates, about Magnus Carlsen’s unproven cheating allegations against Hans Niemann. Far from being a passing fad, the game’s popularity continues to grow month after month, as does the list of celebrities drawn to it.

The first reason is simple: anyone who falls in love with chess is unlikely ever to be bored again. The number of possible chess games (a 1 followed by 123 zeros) exceeds the estimated number of atoms in the known universe (a 1 followed by 80 zeros). Chess also intersects with an extraordinary range of fields: education, artificial intelligence, mathematics, teaching, psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, film, literature and international politics. Few human activities can boast more than 1,500 years of documented history, making chess a gold mine for journalists and storytellers. Those 15 centuries have produced hundreds of characters worthy of novels and films.

Consider a few examples of the extraordinary range of subjects that fall within what might be called chess culture. The game has played a significant role in the development of artificial intelligence, from Alan Turing’s pioneering work in 1947 to Demis Hassabis’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2024. It was banned by the Spanish Inquisition, by the Chinese government during the final years of Mao Zedong’s rule, by Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran and, today, by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Globally, there is roughly one female player for every 10 male players. Alongside music and mathematics, it is one of the fields most closely associated with child prodigies. There is also strong scientific evidence that chess develops both cognitive and emotional intelligence and helps slow age-related cognitive decline, potentially delaying the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.

Former world champion Garry Kasparov, now living in exile in New York, ranks high on Vladimir Putin’s list of enemies. His great rival, Anatoly Karpov, a lawmaker for Putin’s party, was found unconscious on a dark street shortly after publicly opposing the invasion of Ukraine.

Nearly 1,300 years after chess formed part of the education of Andalusian nobles, Spain is at the forefront of efforts to introduce the game as an educational tool, thanks above all to a rare unanimous resolution passed by Congress on Feb. 11, 2015. The country also leads in the social and therapeutic uses of chess, particularly in the Spanish region of Extremadura, where it is used in programs addressing cognitive aging, prison rehabilitation, addiction recovery, ADHD, autism spectrum disorder and Down syndrome, among others. And since the enormous success of the 1987 Kasparov-Karpov World Championship match in Seville, whose final game drew 13 million television viewers in Spain, the country has also hosted more international chess tournaments than any other, with several hundred held each year.

It is an encouraging picture, one that contrasts sharply with the culture of intellectual laziness fostered by the misuse of social media and, more recently, ChatGPT and similar tools. Millions of people now simply copy, paste and submit material with little original thought when asked by a boss or teacher to complete a task, raising questions about whether Homo sapiens will continue to deserve its name.

Goethe, one of history’s greatest men of letters, set a high bar when he said: “Chess is the touchstone of the intellect.” Yet an Indian proverb reminds us that mastery is not required to enjoy the game: “Chess is a sea where a gnat may drink from and an elephant may bathe in.” Perhaps the German master Siegbert Tarrasch, one of the world’s best players a century ago, captured its essence best: “Chess, like love and music, has the power to make men happy.”

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Donald Trump wants to meet with him again. Vladimir Putin needs him to sustain his war in Ukraine. And Xi Jinping chose a visit to Pyongyang as his first, and so far only, foreign trip of 2026. Kim Jong-un, the supreme leader of secretive North Korea, has managed to make the United States, Russia and China compete for his attention. Despite leading a nuclear-armed regime long subjected to international sanctions and presiding over a tiny economy, Kim appears to have found a formula for exerting influence over Washington, Moscow and Beijing: offering each of them something different, and something none wants left in the hands of the others.

“Kim has deliberately sought to increase North Korea’s strategic value to several major powers, rather than return to the kind of dependence and isolation it faced years ago,” Rachel Minyoung Lee, senior researcher in the Korea program at the U.S. think tank Stimson, explains by email.

The outcome is less the result of a grand strategy than of a series of opportunities skillfully exploited. Kim could not have foreseen Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or that ties with Moscow would evolve into a military alliance, Lee notes. But he has proved “adept” at turning the needs of others into strategic leverage, she argues.

The latest opportunity emerged last Monday, just hours before U.S. and South Korean forces began their main joint summer military exercises. Trump unexpectedly ordered the Pentagon to “substantially” reduce U.S. participation, citing the high cost of the drills and his dissatisfaction with Seoul’s level of support during the war with Iran.

Trump justified the decision in a post on Truth Social, where he also emphasized that the exercises make North Korea uncomfortable, despite the fact that, he said, the country had been “unthreatening and respectful” since his return to the White House. The Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises ended on Friday, six days ahead of schedule. There is no precedent for military drills of this scale being cut short at Washington’s request once they have already begun.

For Pyongyang, which sees the exercises as rehearsals for an invasion, the reduction amounts to a concession secured before negotiations have even begun, Ramón Pacheco Pardo, professor of international relations at King’s College London, says by phone.

A pivotal player

Trump is turning his attention back to Pyongyang at a time of mounting domestic pressure and frustration over his inability to achieve the results he had hoped for in the Middle East. The images of his three meetings with Kim between 2018 and 2019, the only meetings ever held between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader, made headlines around the world. Although the process ultimately ended without an agreement, the Republican still portrays it as one of the major achievements of his first term. In recent days, he has highlighted his “great relationship” with Kim and said he is considering another meeting, perhaps in the fall, when he travels to Shenzhen, China, for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders’ summit.

Seven years after their last handshake, however, that photo opportunity comes at a higher price. Kim Yo-jong, the North Korean leader’s sister and one of his closest aides, has denied that the two sides are engaged in negotiations, though she has left the door ajar to dialogue if Washington changes its policy toward Pyongyang. The personal relationship between her brother and the U.S. president, she noted, “remains excellent.”

Still, Jenny Town, director of the publication 38 North, stresses in a phone interview that Pyongyang should not be underestimated. “North Korea has options,” Town says, noting that cooperation with Russia is designed to outlast the war and that North Korea has recently expanded ties with other countries at odds with the West. Relations with China, meanwhile, have entered what Chinese and North Korean state media in June described as a “new historic stage.”

Although sanctions continue to weigh on the country and China’s economic support remains indispensable, there is “no longer any urgency” for Pyongyang to sit down and talk with the United States, Town stresses. That gives Kim room to wait, raise his demands and decide when it suits him to turn back toward Washington. “He believes he is a key player in reshaping the world order” and “on equal footing with his partners,” Town says.

The war in Ukraine has made clear that this ambition extends far beyond rhetoric. North Korea has become a crucial supplier for Russia’s war of attrition in a conflict that has now stretched into its fifth year. The U.K.-based Open Source Centre estimates that, since mid-2023, Pyongyang has shipped between eight million and 11 million artillery shells and rockets, while Ukrainian intelligence believes North Korean supplies have at times accounted for nearly half of the ammunition used by Russian artillery on the front lines.

Weapons have been accompanied by manpower. Since 2024, some 15,000 North Korean troops have fought in Russia’s Kursk region. Kyiv estimates that around 8,500 North Korean personnel are currently deployed in Russia, including engineers, sappers and drone operators. “North Korea can now present itself as a country that contributes to the security of another major power,” Lee notes.

It is a significant reversal of roles: a state long treated as a problem to be contained by others is now providing ammunition and troops to a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council. The relationship has continued to deepen since Putin and Kim signed a strategic partnership treaty in 2024 committing the two countries to assist one another in the event of an attack.

China steps up its diplomacy

The exchange has also reduced Pyongyang’s isolation. In return for its military support, North Korea has obtained revenue, oil, economic cooperation, combat experience for its troops and, possibly, military technology transfers. Russia has also helped weaken one of the main instruments of pressure on North Korea: despite U.N. sanctions, it openly imports North Korean weapons and, in 2024, vetoed the renewal of the panel of experts responsible for monitoring those sanctions. The sanctions remain in force, but they have lost their main independent oversight mechanism.

The burgeoning Russia-North Korea partnership has also altered the balance with Beijing. A European diplomat based in the Chinese capital argues that North Korea’s involvement in Ukraine has forced China’s leadership to reassess its calculations. Although China remains by far North Korea’s main economic partner and traditional ally, the existence of a Russian alternative has reduced Beijing’s ability to impose conditions. That added room for maneuver has unsettled Chinese policymakers, who in recent months have accelerated high-level diplomatic engagement with Pyongyang.

Kim returned to China in September 2025 after six years without meeting Xi, and stood alongside the Chinese leader and Putin during the grand military parade in Tiananmen Square marking the 80th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) and the end of World War II.

Xi traveled to Pyongyang in June for the first time since 2019, in what remains his only foreign trip this year. For China, keeping North Korea within its orbit means preserving a partner against the U.S. military presence on the Korean Peninsula, preventing instability along its border and ensuring a central role in any crisis that could upset the regional balance. During his visit, Xi reaffirmed a friendship “forged in blood” and a bond of comradeship and mutual trust that, he said, has withstood both the passage of time and a changing international landscape.

The official accounts of the meeting also contained a notable omission. There was no mention of denuclearization, which for years had been one of Beijing’s stated objectives on the Korean Peninsula. Although China has not formally abandoned that goal, it has avoided raising it publicly in the face of an emboldened Kim, who insists that North Korea’s nuclear arsenal is not up for negotiation.

“Kim is trying to make North Korea impossible for the United States to ignore,” Lee says. The researcher argues that Kim’s nuclear arsenal is no longer merely a guarantee of the regime’s survival. It has also become a source of power, autonomy and international status. “He wants to be treated as a normal actor,” Town says, “and to engage with the international community on his own terms.”

And Trump, with his appetite for attention and recognition, may be particularly receptive to that ambition. While previous administrations maintained the complete denuclearization of North Korea as their objective, the U.S. president has gone so far as to refer to the country as a “nuclear power.” That does not amount to formally recognizing North Korea as a nuclear-armed state, his administration still officially calls for denuclearization, but it breaks with the caution of previous governments and raises the possibility that any future negotiations may not begin with demands for the dismantling of Pyongyang’s arsenal.

Pacheco Pardo believes the U.S. president has made it quite clear that his priority is to deal directly with Kim and secure an outcome “he can sell as a victory.”

For now, Kim does not appear to be in any hurry. But a future opening from Washington, and above all any easing of sanctions, would help him continue to diversify North Korea’s international relationships. “North Korea does not want to depend on anyone,” explains Pacheco Pardo.

Having strengthened its ties with Russia and repaired its relationship with China, Pyongyang can afford to wait and assess what it might be able to extract from Trump.

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