No matter what some say, cooperation with Morocco on migration is anything but exemplary. If it were, thousands of Moroccans would not be entering Ceuta by jumping fences (10,000 in 2021) or swimming (50,000 these very days) before the helpless gaze of the few police officers and civil guards deployed there. The passivity of the Moroccan law enforcement forces, evidenced in numerous videos, leaves no doubt about their complicity or indifference to a mass assault (“attack and violation of our territorial sovereignty,” said Pedro Sánchez upon landing in the city) that has already left about fifty young people drowned and projects a terrible image of our neighbor as a country from which people want to flee en masse and take any opportunity to do so, even at the cost of their own lives.
Can you imagine what it is like to receive 50,000 people in a city of 18.5 km² and 83,000 inhabitants? People who are hungry and have no place to sleep because the reception facilities have been overwhelmed. You cannot take a step in the city, people are terrified, shops are closed, and festivals have been postponed. The president of Ceuta, Juan Jesús Vivas, accuses the government of reacting “late and insufficiently,” while our European partners are concerned about the porosity of a European border and demand firmness. All this just a few kilometers from Tetouan, where King Mohammed VI celebrated the Throne Day on July 30, the 27th anniversary of his enthronement, from the very palace that the Spanish High Commissioner occupied during the years of the Protectorate, with a speech that made no mention whatsoever of the mass exodus of thousands of young people from his country who see no future within its borders.
There must undoubtedly be reasons for this mass exodus and for the silence and passivity of the Moroccan officials who should have prevented it in the first place. Or at least made an effort to try. Certainly, there are the brutal income and life prospects differences between Spain and Morocco, reminiscent of the image from Mao Zedong’s Red Book of wealthy enclaves besieged by the poor of the Earth. That has no short-term solution. There is also Pedro Sánchez’s recent visit to Algiers to affirm the restoration of a relationship that was affected when his government surprisingly aligned with Morocco by considering the Moroccan offer of autonomy as the “most serious, credible, and realistic” formula to resolve the Western Sahara problem. Algeria, which had broken relations with Rabat when Morocco joined the Abraham Accords and established diplomatic relations with Israel in exchange for Donald Trump giving it the Sahara, reacted angrily, withdrew its ambassador from Madrid, and reduced its gas exports to Spain while minimizing its imports.
Now, four years later, it is normal to turn the page and stage this visit along with the upcoming bilateral summit. I do not think this is the reason. It also translates that this assault on Ceuta is due to the Supreme Court ruling on July 8, which rejects hot returns if the border is crossed by swimming and not by land. I find it very unfortunate; the Immigration Law should be corrected, and perhaps, along with the massive regularization undertaken by the government, it has encouraged many to think that in Spain everything is easy.
Another possible reason is the bill to grant Spanish nationality to Sahrawis who already had it for having been born before 1976, when the Sahara was a Spanish province like Barcelona or Cuenca today, regardless of whether they currently reside in the exile camps of Tindouf or in the Sahara occupied by Morocco. That may have upset Rabat, very sensitive to anything related to the Sahara, especially if Madrid had not announced it beforehand, which I do not know, although our government is not known for such details. Some even think this is a warning for us to give Casablanca the 2030 World Cup final, which we will also organize with Portugal. Imagination is not lacking!
All that may have influenced, (?) but my opinion is different: the ultimate root of what is happening is the weakness that Pedro Sánchez’s government shows with Morocco for reasons difficult to understand, except for buying short-term peace by ignoring that yielding again and again to Morocco guarantees future problems. I am convinced. Rabat confuses concession with weakness, especially when the concessions are continuous: we did not protest when Morocco unilaterally closed the Melilla customs in 2019; we also did not protest, unlike France, which opened a crisis with Morocco, when Pegasus infected the phones of the president and several ministers at the same time as the bilateral crisis that erupted when we received Brahim Ghali, leader of the Polisario Front, in a hospital in Logroño for humanitarian reasons; we have also said nothing when for some years Morocco has been economically suffocating Ceuta and Melilla by prohibiting all trade with their Moroccan surroundings; or when it installs fishing grounds in the Chafarinas Islands…
I do not know the reasons for this lack of firmness, but I know that Rabat does not interpret it as gestures of friendship, but as signs of weakness from a government without budgets, without a parliamentary majority to legislate, and—apparently—without the guts to defend its interests and positions fearlessly before its southern neighbor. Morocco must always be treated with the respect and affection it deserves as a neighbor. But also with firmness. And I fear this government lacks that. From such dust, these muds.
Jorge Dezcallar was Spain’s ambassador to Morocco, as well as director of the CNI and ambassador to the United States and the Holy See
