Pedro Sánchez has started a sort of ‘tour’ through some media outlets that his team frames as the start of the political season and the need to explain himself, not as an electoral campaign staging, although it may give that impression. The Government is publishing this Wednesday 40 documents from the National Police, the Civil Guard, the military intelligence, and the CNI about warnings and reports between July 1 and August 1. And, precisely, the head of the Executive considers that Spain’s intelligence services must “improve” in the area of “anticipation” and “prevention” to prevent “movements” like those that occurred at the Ceuta border. He also believes that the State “has to improve how we prepare for hybrid attacks of this nature” referring to what happened in Ceuta.
This is the self-criticism more than 40 days after the massive entry of more than 70,000 immigrants into Ceuta from Morocco, on July 30 and 31. Because the thesis of La Moncloa remains that there was no report or warning from any department that foresaw the magnitude of what happened those days. “We have read them all. They are situation reports from the previous days, which were the subject not only of meetings between departments but also with the Ceuta government. There was a slight peak in the number of arrivals by swimming, we are talking about hundreds, absolutely not that 70,000 people could cross the border.”
The President of the Government, in an interview on TVE, wanted to shed responsibility for inaction or lack of prevention, shielding himself by saying he had no information that anticipated what happened, emphasizing that no department or agency warned them. “Without undermining their professionalism, a massive arrival of migrants was not anticipated at all.” And in light of this description of the events, he sends a message to the country’s intelligence services: “In the area of anticipation, of prevention, we must have sufficiently sophisticated intelligence so that we can see in the digital world how these movements can occur – referring to what happened in Ceuta. It is one of the elements we have to improve.”
Hybrid attack is how Sánchez defines what happened in Ceuta. And landing on the ground, he talks about a humanitarian crisis and not a migratory crisis or a “violation of Spain’s territorial integrity,” which is how he defined what happened in the autonomous city during his visit on July 31, a term he has not publicly used again.
In his second stop on his media ‘tour’ – the previous one was on Ser and the next will be on La Sexta – Sánchez has denied that neither he nor his Government are victims of blackmail by Morocco, as the PP suggests, referring to the possibility that they might have compromising information after his phone was hacked through Pegasus. “This Government, of course, never accepts blackmail because it is not in our nature, we have nothing to hide.”
Regarding the King’s visit to Ceuta and Melilla, he has not offered more details. Last week, in his appearance in Congress, he said it would be in the “coming weeks” without further specification. “It is more justified and more necessary than ever that the head of State visits Ceuta and Melilla. The dates will be communicated jointly by the Government and the Royal House. What I can advance is that we are working on upcoming dates.”
