Three Vox leaders are summoned to the sectoral commission on Childhood to be held this Thursday, August 13, which is the preliminary step to the Sectoral Conference scheduled for the end of the month where the distribution across Spain of the 1,342 unaccompanied foreign minors remaining in Ceuta will be addressed. The hard-right leaders summoned to this meeting are the vice presidents that Vox has in three autonomous communities and who, following the pacts sealed with the PP, assume the immigration responsibilities: Óscar Fernández (Extremadura), Alejandro Nolasco (Aragon), and Carlos Pollán (Castile and León). However, this Saturday, the three have addressed a letter to the competent minister, Sira Rego, to announce that they will not attend the meeting and thus formally advance their “refusal” to host these minors in the communities.
To justify their no-show at the sectoral commission, the Vox representatives argue that it is “untimely” since, in their view, the “individualized files” analyzing the situation of each minor must be completed before beginning to discuss with the communities the distribution of the children. “This autonomous community cannot accept the transfer of unaccompanied foreign minors from Ceuta […] until the prior processing and resolution of the legally required individualized procedures to determine their legal status by a firm resolution have been accredited,” the three vice presidents argue in their identical letters.
Furthermore, Fernández, Nolasco, and Pollán maintain that all these files should conclude with the “return to Morocco” of the minors — “whether by family reunification or by delivery to the competent tutelary institution of Morocco.” And thus, they state that they will legally challenge any file that is not resolved with the “return” of the child to the neighboring country — “there is no other legal option,” they say.
This is part of the strategy initiated by Vox, through the regional governments where it has presence, to oppose “by all legal, judicial, and political means” the distribution of the minors who have arrived in Ceuta. Although, ultimately, the communities will be obliged to host the children determined by the Ministry, Santiago Abascal’s party wants to stage its opposition by all possible channels, as reflected in the pacts sealed with the PP. It will also do so in Andalusia, although there the vice president Manuel Gavira does not have immigration responsibilities and therefore is not summoned to the sectoral commission next Thursday.
In the letter they sent to Minister Rego, the three Vox vice presidents also reproach her that the summons they received yesterday does not make a “concrete and specific mention of the very serious events that have occurred in Ceuta in recent weeks.” They also criticize that the letter does not contemplate the Government’s “responsibilities” in “securing the border” nor those of the neighboring country.
Regarding the latter, the Vox leaders also reproach the minister for not referring to “Morocco’s formal offer to take charge […] of all the minors instrumentalized in that act [the irregular entry of 72,000 people into Ceuta on July 30].” In the letter, the hard-right vice presidents describe what happened as an “invasion of our territory” and, “due to the set of concurrent circumstances,” define it as an “example of a hybrid warfare act.”
