The citizens of Ceuta received an apology this Tuesday from the Government through the voice of the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, who acknowledged before Congress that something has been done wrong when the people of Ceuta feel “abandoned, distressed, alone, and sad.” In this phrase, Robles condensed the evident reflection that the Government has made about its late and insufficient response to an unprecedented humanitarian and security crisis that has overwhelmed the autonomous city throughout August. The result of that reflection is a general mobilization on several fronts that responds, 26 days later, to the severity of the crisis.
Read more What Spain still owes Ceuta
Robles is the first of eight ministers in total who will go to Congress to explain the Ceuta crisis, two weeks after they refused to do so in the Senate. In this first session, many questions about the origin of the massive assault on the border by sea remained unanswered, especially regarding the responsibility of Morocco, to which Robles avoided referring directly. The PP, whose most urgent concern is to find culprits while the crisis is still ongoing, demanded to know if there was prior intelligence information about the avalanche of July 30. The minister replied that CNI agents in Ceuta had shared information in the days before with the State security forces, seeing the increase in crossings by swimming.
Robles’s statement contrasted with that offered by the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, at the same time in the press conference of the Council of Ministers. Marlaska reiterated that “there was no intelligence report” that would have allowed foreseeing that 80,000 people would cross by swimming on July 30. Parsing finely, both statements are compatible. But almost a month after the events, both political leaders should be able to offer a single, coherent, and understandable account of the background of the assault. The Ceuta crisis cannot be reduced to a petty blame game between the CNI, the Army, the Police, and the Civil Guard, whose agents risked their physical integrity those days and saved countless lives at sea.
Read more Heads and tails in the search and exhumation of victims of Francoism in Jaén
The clash, however, is irrelevant to the people of Ceuta. Nothing has changed on the ground, where despair, unhealthiness, and insecurity remain the daily reality in some areas. The Government declared this Tuesday the situation in Ceuta as a matter of national security, a measure it had rejected until now, and created a unified command for the response in the person of Minister Ángel Víctor Torres. The Council of Ministers approved a financial package of 25 million for the management of minors in the autonomous city. It is the appropriate response to a situation that has not changed since August 1.
On the legal front, Marlaska announced the reform of the immigration law and a new asylum law. The draft bills are generally aimed at speeding up the processing times of files and facilitating the expulsion of irregular immigrants who do not meet protection requirements. They represent a regulatory turnaround full of novelties to adapt Spanish legislation to the European Pact on Migration and Asylum. That pact was reached in May 2024, under the Spanish presidency of the Council, and was then showcased as a great achievement. However, Spain has delayed its implementation, and the new regulations, which still must be approved by Congress, also arrive late.
