The Prime Minister has specified when the visit of Felipe VI to Ceuta, and also to Melilla, could take place, one of the issues that has been ongoing throughout this month of crisis since the surge at the border with Morocco, after Juan Jesús Vivas, president of Ceuta, revealed the Monarch’s “personal commitment” to make it: “in the coming weeks” and to “convey the State’s absolute commitment to these two autonomous cities,” said Pedro Sánchez during his speech this Thursday in Congress.
In an interview on Cadena Ser, the head of government emphasized on Monday that the King has not been to Ceuta for 20 years. “What he did was not a reproach, but rather he stated a reality,” the spokesperson of La Moncloa, Elma Saiz, had to excuse him the next day amid the controversy sparked by his words.
Until now, the Government had not specified when that official trip of Felipe VI to the autonomous city could take place, about which the president assured there is “no complication,” although it would likely entail a new diplomatic conflict with Morocco. Regarding this, they had limited themselves to concluding: “The important thing is that this visit will take place.”
To try to defuse the interpretation of Sánchez’s words, the central government insisted that the last time the King Emeritus was in Ceuta was in 2007 and that neither he nor his son – who ascended to the throne in 2014 – have returned in two decades during which “there have been different governments led by the PP and PSOE.” In this way, they argued, what he tried to highlight in the mentioned interview is that he has not put obstacles to it happening.
“It is a false controversy caused by the political and media right, who have accused us of having vetoed the visit,” they maintained in La Moncloa, visibly annoyed by the “flight” that had been given to this matter. In any case, they avoided giving the slightest approximation about the dates on which a trip that, they emphasized, “is not yet organized” will take place.
