Flag: Ceuta & Melilla

Two small Spanish cities on Morocco's Mediterranean coast, each with a land border with Morocco. Ceuta faces Gibraltar across the strait; Melilla lies further east. Melilla has been Spanish since 1497, Ceuta Portuguese from 1415 and Spanish since 1668, and both have governed themselves as autonomous cities since 1995. They are part of Spain and of the European Union. Morocco claims both, Spain rejects the claim, and their fenced borders are the EU's only land frontiers with Africa, which is why they appear in the news whenever people cross from Morocco, as thousands did at Ceuta in May 2021.

The emoji exists for a dry reason. Emoji flags are built from pairs of letter codes taken from the international country-code list. That list sets the code EA aside for Ceuta and Melilla, because the two cities sit outside the EU's customs area and customs paperwork needed a label for them. Any two-letter code on the list can become a flag, so EA did. There is no joint flag for the pair: Ceuta flies a black-and-white banner, Melilla a pale blue one. Faced with that, most emoji makers simply drew the Spanish flag, while others draw nothing and leave the letters EA showing.

What does it mean when someone sends 🇪🇦?

Usually Ceuta or Melilla itself, and quite often an accidental Spain flag. People from the two cities use it the way anyone uses a hometown flag: in profiles, holiday photos, local football chat, or beside the city's name. Because keyboards list it right next to 🇪🇸 with the same picture, plenty of people pick it when they meant Spain and never notice. If a friend sends you a wordless Spanish-looking flag and your screen shows EA, that is the likely story, and nobody was making a point.

It becomes pointed only in political talk. In threads about migration, border fences or who the cities belong to, 🇪🇦 asserts that Ceuta and Melilla are Spanish, which Moroccan nationalists dispute. Read the words around it and answer those, not the flag.