Pedro Sánchez denounced this Friday a “violation of the territorial integrity of Spain,” after 50,000 people entered Ceuta from Morocco in the last few hours in a migration crisis that far exceeds that of 2021. The Prime Minister blamed “the mafias that traffic in human beings” and defended Morocco’s response, referring to it as “an ally” in a statement made at the Assembly of the autonomous city, on his fifth visit since he arrived at La Moncloa.
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Sánchez stated that “the communication” since yesterday with the Moroccan authorities has been “constant, fluid and very reasonable, unlike what happened in 2021.” At that time, an unprecedented arrival of about 10,000 people occurred. The Ministry of the Interior estimates that this time that figure has multiplied by five. To those estimates must be added the hundreds of young people who arrived in the previous days by swimming. Ceuta has a population of 84,000 inhabitants.
Sánchez has asked Morocco to “speed up” and “give a much more forceful response” than the one made so far. According to the Interior Ministry, departures from Ceuta to Morocco until one in the afternoon exceeded 25,000 people. The president linked the crisis to the “interested” interpretation by the mafias of a Supreme Court ruling from three weeks ago, which determined that those who enter Ceuta and Melilla by swimming cannot be returned immediately. The court established that express rejection is only applicable to those who try to enter “by overcoming the established border containment elements, such as fences.” The Supreme Court also pointed out that, if the Government wishes, since the law refers to “border containment elements” and not exclusively to land containment elements nor specifically to fences, “nothing would prevent, if containment elements were established in the sea to protect the border line,” that express rejection could be applied “to those who intend to cross the border irregularly by overcoming those maritime containment elements.”
The Prime Minister has explained precisely that the deployment of buoys is already being studied on the breakwater that separates Ceuta from the Moroccan city of Castillejos, “to comply with the Supreme Court ruling and, so that it can be seen from the administrative point of view that there is a containment barrier, a physical barrier in visual terms, to facilitate repatriation at the border.” He also did not rule out “from the legislative point of view modifying some aspects of the laws to facilitate repatriation in the most effective way possible.”
The arrivals prior to Thursday caused the first requests for help from Juan Jesús Vivas, the mayor-president of Ceuta since 2001, who already warned of the “collapse” situation while calling for the Government’s “forceful and immediate” response. “All of us here did not think we would see something like 2021 again. The extreme vulnerability of our city has been revealed, which requires structural measures so that it does not happen again,” Vivas asserted, criticizing the Government’s “late and insufficient” response.
Vivas, in office since 2001 and the regional leader with the longest tenure at the head of an institution, requested the activation of the national emergency on Thursday due to the scale of the crisis, but the Ministry of the Interior justifies that it is not possible to do so for a migration crisis, since that legal figure is only contemplated for natural and technological risks. The Government published on December 31, 2021, in the Official State Gazette, seven months after the migration crisis, the National Security Strategy, which proposed “the development of a comprehensive security plan for Ceuta and Melilla.” The reason given by La Moncloa was the “geographical location on the African continent” of both cities “and the specificity of their Spanish and European border.” Five years later, the comprehensive plan is still pending, despite the Government having concluded that both cities “require special attention from the General State Administration to guarantee the security and well-being of their citizens.”
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In the 2021 crisis, Sánchez committed, as he does now, to restoring control at the border as quickly as possible. “We will be firm to guarantee security against any challenge, any eventuality, and under any circumstance,” he said in an institutional statement at La Moncloa.
“The integrity of Ceuta as part of our nation, its security, and the peace of our compatriots and residents there are guaranteed by the action of the Government of Spain, whatever conditions are necessary for it and with all available means,” the head of the Executive declared then. As now, Sánchez referred to Morocco in a friendly manner as “a partner and friend country of Spain and it should continue to be so.”
The hospital treatment of the Polisario leader, Brahim Gali, who was admitted in April of that year to a center in Logroño, triggered the clash with Rabat, which stopped taking responsibility for border control. “Taking care of our relations has always been part of Spanish foreign policy and it should continue to be so. My wish, like that of all Spaniards, is to further strengthen our relationship and reinforce friendship with our Moroccan neighbors,” Sánchez emphasized at the height of the crisis.
A year later, La Moncloa, in an unexpected turn, sided with Morocco in the Sahara conflict. Sánchez described the Moroccan autonomy proposal for the former Spanish colony as the “most serious, realistic, and credible” to resolve the conflict. Mohamed VI considered the diplomatic crisis, which lasted 10 months, closed, but the reconciliation with Rabat unleashed a new crisis with Algeria, aligned with the claims of the Polisario Front. Algeria suspended the friendship treaty with Spain in June 2022 and froze trade after Sánchez ratified the new stance in Congress on the Western Sahara dispute. The relationship was not fully restored until last week, when the Prime Minister visited the Maghreb country, where he agreed with his Algerian counterpart, Abdelmayid Tebún, to “reactivate all cooperation mechanisms” and increase gas supply. The governments of both countries agreed to hold their first high-level meeting in eight years in October.
A few days later, the Justice Committee of Congress approved granting Spanish nationality to Sahrawis born when the territory was considered another Spanish province and to their descendants, with the support of PSOE and its partners, the abstention of PP, and the rejection of Vox. A week later, Ceuta is the epicenter of a crisis greater than that of five years ago.
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