In his first public appearance in a month, Pedro Sánchez made a strong defense of Morocco this Monday, exonerating it from any possible responsibility in the avalanche of 72,000 people who on July 30 illegally crossed the border into Ceuta. “If there is no cooperation, this crisis will not be resolved; on the contrary, it would worsen,” warned the Prime Minister in an interview on the Ser channel, emphasizing that “the lack of trust” would only make the situation worse.
During his speech, in which he avoided talking again about “an attack on the territorial integrity of Spain” as he did the day after the massive arrival to the autonomous city, the head of the Executive criticized that “serious, dangerous and gratuitous accusations” are being made against the neighboring country, to which he added: “There is no information from the State Security Forces, the CNI, or any intelligence center that casts any doubt about the participation in one way or another of the Moroccan authorities.”
Furthermore, Sánchez stated that there are “sufficient arguments and reasons” for the King to visit Ceuta, something that has not been done under either PSOE or PP mandates, although without specifying a date. The president of the autonomous city, Juan Jesús Vivas, said after his reception at the Marivent Palace in Mallorca that Felipe VI had conveyed his commitment to make an official visit, which depends on the Government’s authorization.
Regarding the clash of versions between his own ministers about whether the CNI warned—as Margarita Robles (Defense) claims—or not about what could happen at the border, the socialist leader avoided delving into the controversy, stating that “no one has denied that there were situation reports”—something that Fernando Grande-Marlaska (Interior) did not admit until his appearance on Friday in Congress—and that “those reports led to the activation of reinforcements” in the days prior to July 30. What he clarified in this regard is that to “guarantee” means that there was no alert about “the magnitude” of what happened.
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Asked if it is credible that 72,000 people moved through northern Morocco without detecting what was going to happen, Sánchez explained that they were “in constant communication” with the neighboring country’s authorities and that on July 31, “it is true, an operational deployment began to be seen in the Castillejos area to face the avalanche of people trying to enter the autonomous city irregularly,” assuming that the day before there was none. “Therefore, we do not have that information. The information we have and the facts we work on are those I have mentioned,” he said.
The Prime Minister tried to limit responsibility to “a structural inequality at the border that makes its management very complex” and to the “hoax spread on social networks” about the Supreme Court ruling of August 8 that confirmed the prohibition of hot returns at maritime entries. In this regard, he stressed that “it is not evident that attacks that can be perpetrated at a border must come from a state actor,” as they can be orchestrated by “criminal organizations and mafias,” but that, “unfortunately, they do not have an “exact knowledge” of what happened.
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