Hearing your name and hearing applause. Not a bad start. In a way, playing at home. Pedro Sánchez continues his ‘media tour’ at the start of this political term, in what is an attempt to explain the government’s actions and its purposes, but which has been monopolized by the need for explanations about what happened in Ceuta. The head of the Executive, in this case on La Sexta – after Ser and TVE – has launched a new jab at the CNI by criticizing their ‘WhatsApp’ to the Government delegation in Ceuta and for not raising their suspicions to the Government and, for the first time, has delved into his good treatment and defense of Morocco in this crisis: “It is the country to which a large majority of the immigrants who arrived must return.”
The Government’s position regarding Morocco is one of the issues in which Sánchez’s loneliness has been most revealed. Neither the opposition, nor his governing partners, nor the vast majority of public opinion – according to published polls – have supported his approach of defending the Alaouite kingdom. Additionally, some of the reports known a few days ago accounted for the alleged passivity of the Moroccan gendarmes during the massive entry. At La Moncloa they argue that they cannot unleash a diplomatic conflict of the seriousness that it would be with a neighboring country without “solid evidence.” And that, to this day, they do not have it.
Faced with this fact, Sánchez has taken a step further by verbalizing to the public what is behind that roadmap. “From a pragmatic point of view, we need to articulate a positive relationship to solve this problem (referring to the Ceuta crisis) and so that it does not happen again.”
During these weeks, from the PP and Vox the theory has been encouraged that Sánchez’s attitude would be because Morocco has sensitive information on him, after the hacking suffered by the Prime Minister through the Pegasus system, which also affected other sensitive government ministers such as Margarita Robles (Defense), Fernando Grande-Marlaska (Interior) or Luis Planas (Agriculture). The European Parliament investigation committee on the Pegasus case issued a report in May 2023 with its conclusions after more than a year of work. It pointed to Morocco as the “possible” responsible party for spying on the Government’s mobile phones.
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Sánchez denies this approach. “For a series on Netflix it’s fine, but reality is built on facts and not on rumors.”
Another big question present is when the Government believes normality will return to Ceuta. In principle, the deadline is until the end of the year, which is how long the single command of the crisis is expected to be maintained, which falls to the figure of Minister Ángel Víctor Torres. “We hope to have the situation stabilized by then.”
The Executive does not offer figures on how many immigrants remain in the autonomous city. It says it is impossible to give a number. Sánchez has said that “9 out of 10” who entered have left, but, at the same time, he has estimated that this week the figure of 6,000 places to accommodate immigrants (adults) will be reached and that work is underway to reach 10,000 in case they are needed.
