Open, unsuspected crisis of enormous proportions in the Ministry of the Interior. While the minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, and the president of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, repeatedly stated that Morocco had no responsibility in the assault on the Spanish border on July 30 and 31, the General Immigration Police Station was preparing and sending to the judge investigating the events for being on duty those days, María Tardón, a meticulous report asserting the opposite: that there is conclusive evidence that Moroccan agents directed the crowd to El Tarajal and executed a preconceived plan.
Moreover, the report was delivered to the court on the same morning, this past Monday, when President Sánchez himself said on Cadena Ser, literally: “There is no information from the State Security Forces and Corps, nor from the CNI, nor from any intelligence center that raises any doubt about the participation of Moroccan authorities.”
The report, prepared by CENIF (National Immigration and Borders Center), even contains images of Moroccan agents directing the crowd to the border and giving orders to uniformed gendarmes, and presents the events as a carefully planned process aimed at overwhelming the Spanish border control system, and in no case the action of “mafias” nor any shadow of “Russia” or “Israel,” as President Sánchez said.
Thus, as soon as the content of the report became public on Tuesday night, police sources already predicted to EL MUNDO, as this newspaper published, a major institutional clash. The document had not passed through the Directorate General of Police, headed by Francisco Pardo Piqueras, and therefore the Interior Ministry was left in an unusual offside, along with President Sánchez himself.
The Interior Ministry’s response was swift. Marlaska has now automatically addressed Pardo by letter to ask for explanations, in the following terms, according to official Interior sources: the minister demanded “to know since when the National Police had this investigation, essential for the Government to make appropriate decisions regarding the Ceuta migration crisis in the exercise of its constitutional functions.”
The minister relies on the National Security Law to know the content of the report, which has left the Government so shocked that the single command appointed by him, Minister Ángel Víctor Torres, did not know how to respond when asked about the report in question on Radio Nacional on Wednesday morning. Torres said he was unaware “if it is a particular report from an agent, if that report was requested by whom, and therefore at this moment we are waiting for everything to be clarified, because that is what the public also deserves.” “If we want to speak rigorously, undoubtedly we must have that report on the table”, the single command managed to say.
Immigration sources consulted by this newspaper assure, however, that the document was formally requested by Tardón directly from the General Police Station – just as the judge has requested another in similar terms from the Civil Guard – and that the Criminal Procedure Law requires the mentioned body to deliver its conclusions directly to the judicial authority. They also add that Pardo Piqueras was not informed of its content. The open crisis, however, has unpredictable consequences.