Two things became clear this Thursday at the Sectoral Conference on Childhood and Adolescence. The first, that the 25 million euros promised by the Government to help Ceuta will arrive, as planned, in the autonomous city after the unanimous support of the communities that attended the meeting. The second, that when it comes to the distribution of immigrant minors, the tone always becomes heated. The money finds an outlet almost a month after the massive entry on July 30 and 31; the distribution, however, remains stalled. The Minister of Youth and Childhood, Sira Rego, emphasized in a press conference that, although the first option for these minors is always family reunification, “in most cases there is no possibility of return.” “There, as a society, what corresponds to us is to welcome and care for those children,” she pointed out.
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The distribution of immigrant minors has become one of the main battlegrounds between the autonomous communities and the Government. Even so, Rego defended the “importance of transfers to ease the situation in Ceuta.” The minister explained that the process is now in the phase of identifying the minors: “We are finishing that phase because the overflow situation has been so great that we are still dealing with this. Then the case-by-case interviews will begin.”
As she detailed, the first files are already being processed and, once completed, they will be transferred to Morocco to try to determine the family situation of the minors. However, the head of Childhood was not particularly optimistic about the cooperation of the neighboring country. “Right now there are 600 files that Morocco has to verify the family situation of minors who arrived before July 30 that remain unanswered,” she clarified.
Thursday’s meeting began with the already announced absences: Aragón, Extremadura, and Castilla y León, the three autonomous communities where Vox manages the competencies of minors since the regional elections held between December and last March. While the ministers of Catalonia, Canary Islands, Navarre, and Madrid attended the ministry, the rest followed the meeting remotely. The three governments with participation from Santiago Abascal’s far-right party had already communicated their decision in a letter sent to Rego on Wednesday, in which they demanded that their explicit veto “to any distribution of unaccompanied minors” from the autonomous city “to any part of the national territory” be recorded in the minutes. It was precisely the acceptance by the PP to host minors in their communities from the Canary Islands that Vox used as an excuse to leave the five regional governments it shared with the Popular Party in 2024.
For now, the Ministry has confirmed that 1,500 children are in Ceuta’s care system, although NGOs working on the ground estimate the number of minors still in the autonomous city to be double. The transfer of 25 million euros will allow Ceuta to charge the expenses generated during the last weeks to “attend to the boys and girls who are alone there, prevent them from being homeless, and also alleviate the city’s situation,” according to Ministry sources. The agreement provides that this amount can be used to cover expenses for accommodation, transfers, food, clothing, legal support, medical care, socio-educational accompaniment, translation services, as well as the identification of vulnerable profiles and their care.
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In response to criticism about the Government’s delay in activating this aid, the Minister of Childhood defended her department’s actions and explained that the deadlines to approve the economic allocation do not depend exclusively on the Ministry. “I cannot shorten the times [to approve the economic allocation]. I have to go through a Council of Ministers, a Sectoral Conference, etc.,” she said. According to ministerial sources, the meeting put on the table the transfer of 500 migrant minors currently hosted in the autonomous city to private resources managed by child protection organizations on the peninsula. Guardianship, however, would remain in Ceuta’s hands.
“Now it is up to Ceuta to make the decision,” said Rego, who reiterated that the autonomous city’s government maintains the competence and guardianship of the minors. “The economic resources will be provided by the Government, that is the commitment,” added the minister.
While waiting for the Ceuta president to make a decision, the Minister of Family, Youth, and Social Affairs of the Community of Madrid, Ana Dávila, has rejected “any kind of distribution” of unaccompanied migrant minors who remain in the autonomous city and has demanded their return to their families. Dávila also considered the 25 million euros committed by the Government “insufficient,” an amount that, in her opinion, “will only be enough to care for the minors in the next two months.”
The amount approved at the Conference also seems insufficient to the Canary Islands. Its minister, Candelaria Delgado, has asked the State to increase funding because “from personal experience that amount will not be enough for Ceuta for more than three months.” Meanwhile, the Minister of Social Rights and Inclusion of the Generalitat of Catalonia, Raúl Moreno, avoided specifying whether the community will host any of the minors. “At this moment we are not at that point,” he responded. Moreno defended that Catalonia is already facing significant pressure on its protection system: “Catalonia is currently hosting more than 2,000 minors and more than 4,000 young people between 18 and 23 years old. Our system is balanced according to the needs we have.” Therefore, he said that the Generalitat “will analyze the proposals and study their feasibility,” although he warned that “the response cannot come from just one autonomous community.”
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