The Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, held an act of reparation for the CNI (National Intelligence Center) this Friday, after it was blamed, even from within the Government itself, for not having warned about the influx in Ceuta of an avalanche of more than 70,000 people coming from Morocco on July 30 and 31. The minister went to the headquarters of the secret service on the outskirts of Madrid to award four agents, to whom she bestowed a distinction for extraordinary merit, for an action in which they risked their lives to save a key CNI facility threatened by a forest fire. Robles not only wanted to personally attend the event, but also made her visit public, including it in the Government’s agenda and sharing a photograph with the intelligence center’s director, Esperanza Casteleiro, and its secretary general, Luis García Terán. According to Defense sources, the minister took the floor to thank the CNI agents for their work and express her recognition of the work they do, recalling that she sometimes speaks with agents who are in countries with risky situations.
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Although she did not explicitly refer to the Ceuta crisis, it was not necessary: the minister assured from the outset that the secret service had done its job, while her Interior counterpart, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, insisted that “there was no report” from the intelligence center warning that “nothing like what happened could occur.”
Faced with the clash of versions, the Government chose on the 8th to declassify 40 documents about the Ceuta crisis from various intelligence services dated between July 3 and 31 of this year. Among them, a note from July 29, the eve of the assault, in which the CNI warned of “the planning of several calls to carry out entry into Ceuta, both by swimming and through the fence, taking advantage of the celebration of the Throne Festival,” the next day. The note reported the existence of a WhatsApp group and two Facebook groups, the latter two with more than 160,000 members in one and more than 22,000 in the other, from which the assault was promoted. Some posts said: “Anyone who wants to enter has one last chance at the Throne Festival around 8, the authorities will be distracted with the celebration and parades,” referring to the presence of King Mohamed VI in the neighboring city of Tetouan. Also declassified were WhatsApp message exchanges between the head of the CNI office in Ceuta and the Chief of Staff of the Government Delegate, in which the former insisted on the same warning at 1:53 p.m. on the 29th. “We have information of an attempt to enter by swimming and jumping the fence for tomorrow, the day of the Throne Festival. We have several Fb [Facebook] and WhatsApp groups encouraging these entries.” Although the CNI is usually reluctant to declassify reports, on this occasion their public release has served to confirm that there were warnings, although they could not specify the scale of the assault, and to improve the center’s image.
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Gonzalo Sanz, Chief of Staff of the Government Delegate in Ceuta, Miguel Ángel Pérez Triano, resigned on the 11th, after the CNI messages became known and the latter claimed that his Chief of Staff had not conveyed the secret service messages to him, contrary to what the former maintains.
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