The Ministry of Childhood convened the autonomous communities this Thursday to address, for the first time jointly, the situation of the 1,898 unaccompanied minor migrants who remain in Ceuta following the massive entry on July 30. Today’s meeting was just a “technical” preparatory meeting for the Sectoral Conference to be held on August 27, which will then indeed bring together Minister Sira Rego with the Childhood counselors of each autonomous community. However, that end-of-month meeting will not have among its agenda items a key issue: “Care for minors and the situation in Ceuta.”
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The communities led by the PP “have refused” to have this issue debated at the Sectoral Conference, according to sources from the Ministry of Childhood. Thus, a hypothetical distribution across the Peninsula of the 1,898 minors still in Ceuta to relieve the city’s care capacity will also not be discussed at that meeting. The PP had already announced its opposition to that distribution which, although the Ministry has not yet officially put it on the table, has hovered over the debate since the massive entry on July 30.
“The PP refuses to debate the situation in Ceuta and the minors who are alone in the autonomous city,” Minister Rego wrote on her social networks, adding: “Vox is neither here nor expected.” The communities where Santiago Abascal’s party holds Childhood competencies –Extremadura, Aragón, and Castilla y León- were not present at this Thursday’s meeting, as a sign of their rejection to host minors. Thus, at least ten autonomous communities oppose hosting the children that Ceuta cannot accommodate in their territories, although ultimately, if the Ministry so determines, they will have to do so by legal imperative – including those co-governed with Vox -.
At this moment, in any case, the Government prioritizes “family reunification” as a way to assist the minors – that is, returning them to their parents in Africa. However, Minister Rego already announced this Thursday that two more options are also being worked on: institutional care and family care – both could require transferring the children to the Peninsula. “Feijóo said yesterday that Ceuta is Spain. Of course it is. And as such, the PP could start by helping to alleviate the situation the autonomous city is experiencing,” Rego reproached. Ministry sources indicate they will again propose debating the situation of the minors at the start of the meeting on the 27th.
From the Valencian Community, the Minister of Social Services, Family, and Childhood, Elena Albalat, has asked the Government that, before “passing the responsibility” for the care of the minors to the different autonomous communities, the Executive must first identify them and search for their families of origin to carry out family reunification. A step, in her view, “necessary” so that a file can be made for each of them and they can thus be transferred to other peninsular territories.
In the Basque Country, the director of Childhood, Adolescence, and Families, Txema Ezkerra, emphasized to the media that the solution “cannot be that Euskadi accepts imposed transfers of minors nor transferring minors from one place to another.” “The State’s first obligation is not to distribute minors. Its first obligation is to protect minors,” he stressed.
And for that, he has demanded that the Government adopt “all avenues” to locate families in order to assess a possible reunification. And if finally achieved, to carry it out. “We are talking about boys, girls, and adolescents, so the fundamental thing at this moment is to guarantee the best interests of the minor,” he added.
In this regard, he also wanted to express his solidarity with the autonomous city and its citizens, although he qualified that this solidarity “cannot be confused with lack of planning, lack of agreement, and lack of respect for competencies. Solidarity yes, but with these premises,” he concluded.
On behalf of the Galician government, the general director of Family, Childhood, and Demographic Dynamization, Jacobo Rey, has supported the extraordinary credit of 25 million for Ceuta but reproached the Government for intending to address the crisis without having yet clarified its dimension. “It is totally impossible to plan” when, he denounced, almost two weeks after the avalanche, the Executive “still has not clarified how many minors must be cared for.”
Rey recalled that Galicia already hosted 141 minors mainly from Canary Islands and Ceuta during the last year and rejected that another effort is now requested from the autonomous communities while, in the Galician case, the State has cut 82% of the funds allocated to their care compared to 2025. “Galicia will comply with the law, as it has always done from the first moment, but within our capacities, with planning and financing,” he concluded.
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