The leadership of the Partido Popular avoids publicly criticizing Morocco for the Ceuta crisis and the massive entry of about 60,000 people through Tarajal. This is what the party leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, did during his visit to the autonomous city on Saturday, when he described the avalanche as a “premeditated occupation.” And Miguel Tellado has done the same again this Monday. In a press conference at the PP headquarters in Madrid, the secretary general did not want to confront Rabat and, instead, criticized the government of Pedro Sánchez. “Since the Government does not respect itself, it is very difficult for it to gain the respect of third countries,” the popular leader responded to the media.
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Under these premises, Génova’s position contrasts with that of the president of Ceuta, from his party, the popular Juan Jesús Vivas, who in an interview with EL PAÍS has indeed called Morocco an “unreliable” partner. The PP leadership, on the other hand, avoids direct confrontation with the Alawite Kingdom and focuses all attention on blaming the government of Pedro Sánchez for not having foreseen the “invasion” and for the “pusillanimous” management of the mass of people once the crisis had erupted on a large scale on Thursday.
“It is essential to clarify what failed in the cooperation with Morocco. This should not have happened and this cannot happen again, and it is the responsibility of the Government of Spain that this does not happen again,” Tellado said. “Every good relationship between states requires reciprocity. Cooperation cannot depend on circumstances. Spain must fulfill its obligations and must demand that others fulfill theirs. That is the framework in which we must operate,” added the secretary general.
Feijóo also spoke this Monday in an interview on Telecinco, where he stated that President Sánchez is beginning to be a “pariah” in the European Union and the rest of the world, while also casting doubt on whether the National Intelligence Center (CNI) was unaware of the “premeditated occupation” of Ceuta. “This has been a premeditated occupation and there is a breach of the territorial integrity of our country,” said the PP leader. “The frivolity with which things are handled in our country, the actions of Mr. Sánchez, of the Minister of Defense, obviously in a normal country, in a European country, they would no longer be in their positions,” Feijóo added.
Parliamentary offensive
At the same time, the Partido Popular has launched an offensive in the Congress and the Senate focused on the Ceuta crisis. In the lower house, the popular party has submitted a series of parliamentary questions directed at the Government to be answered in writing. Meanwhile, in the upper house, where they have an absolute majority, Feijóo’s party has also submitted a request for documentation to “know the reports, statistics of entries of people in irregular situations, the instructions from the Ministry of the Interior following the Supreme Court ruling, as well as the protocols of action.” However, for now, they will not enforce their total control over the agenda and timing, as they have not requested the urgent appearance of any minister this August.
The PP has also demanded in the Senate “data on daily entry attempts, the number of people who died trying to access Ceuta; specific government actions to dismantle criminal organizations dedicated to human trafficking in that territory and the extraordinary economic cost that the Government has allocated to face this migratory pressure.” In any case, the information requests can be ignored by the Executive.
In addition to parliamentary questions and data requests in the Cortes, the Partido Popular demands the Government urgently reform the immigration law “to ensure that the figure of rejection at the border also applies to entries by sea to the cities of Ceuta and Melilla, under the terms of the bill registered by the Partido Popular on July 16.” This initiative aims to override the Supreme Court ruling issued three weeks ago, in which the high court bans hot returns of migrants intercepted at sea who try to enter the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla by swimming.
However, Tellado acknowledged this Monday that there is no room for dialogue with the PSOE. “It has been a couple of weeks since we registered that initiative, since then two extraordinary plenary sessions have been held and neither the Board nor the Congress have shown any interest in debating our initiative,” said the PP secretary general on the matter. “It is very difficult to reach an agreement with those who have gone on vacation, with those who neglect citizens, with those who abandon them,” he asserted.
