Sánchez responds to the crisis in Ceuta with barriers and tougher immigration laws

To understand the medium- and long-term effects that the Ceuta crisis will have on Spanish society, one must look at substantive political actions, beyond the verbal skirmishes between opposing factions. At this level, as we know, people argue about everything, and many cling to the idea that they can impart moral lessons and even – by the well-known principle that ‘those who speak ill think ill’ – linguistic ones. For example, the Minister of Health, Mónica García, insists on rejecting the expression ‘health emergency’, seeing it as a cliché associated with the ‘foreigner as a carrier of disease’. It is a humanitarian crisis, she says, to which we must ‘respond in a humanitarian manner’. If the diagnosis is incorrect, as Dr García rightly pointed out during her hearing before the parliamentary committee, neither will the treatment be correct. However, she has recently authorised the dispatch of 45,000 vaccine doses, even though trade unions in the sector had long been warning of the risk of infectious diseases stemming not from the ethnicity of new arrivals, “but rather from their material living conditions, linked to overcrowding and poor hygiene”. Moreover, with this decision, the minister has sparked yet another row (which are never in short supply in Spain) with the autonomous communities, particularly the Community of Madrid, which accuses the government of failing to draw on national reserves and of seeking to deprive the regions of the necessary vaccines.

Even more significant changes are on the horizon regarding the reception of migrants. The other word over which there is public wrangling, in fact, is ‘invasion’. It is used mainly by the right, whilst the left prefers ‘migration crisis’, but ultimately the government, whilst avoiding even the slightest friction with Morocco, reacts as if faced with an invasion. Pedro Sánchez himself had, from the outset, spoken of an attack on the integrity of Spanish territory, albeit attributing the blame to organised crime groups. What happened in Ceuta at the end of July, when all is said and done, could be all of the above and much more besides: a migration crisis, a humanitarian tragedy (over a hundred deaths, almost all of them Moroccans, for whom Rabat has not yet observed a day of mourning), but also a hybrid attack of the sort already seen in other parts of Europe, for example on the border between Belarus and Poland. For this reason, the long-delayed Council of Ministers meeting on 25 August (which the opposition had been calling for for almost a month) produced two important draft pieces of legislation on immigration, announced on Tuesday by the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska. This is a far-reaching reform that will bring current laws into line with the new European Pact on Migration and Asylum, which came into force in the European Union on 12 June and which Marlaska was keen to present as one of the finest achievements of Spain’s presidency in 2023.

The new regulations provide for the tightening and acceleration of return procedures, establishing a close link between the rejection of an asylum application and the decision to remove the applicant from the territory – two procedures that will no longer be dealt with separately, as is currently the case. Furthermore, the possibility of lodging a preliminary administrative appeal in the event of a refusal has been removed. Furthermore, in border proceedings, the authorities will have the power to impose confinement measures, assigning the asylum seeker a geographical area or even a specific building where they must reside if there is a risk of absconding. None of the announced legislative changes will affect the rights of foreign nationals already residing in Spain, for whom, as is well known, a major regularisation scheme is planned for the coming months. It is the entry of new arrivals that is set to become more difficult, and it will be interesting to see where the Socialists, at the head of a rather diverse coalition, will look to secure votes in Parliament.

Meanwhile, the new policy will bring about a change visible to the naked eye right on the border at Ceuta. On Friday, during his hearing before the parliamentary committee, Minister Marlaska announced the extension of the breakwaters at Tarajal and Benzú (two beaches particularly popular with foreigners fleeing Morocco), a permanent maritime containment barrier made up of anchored buoys, an aerial surveillance system using drones and a maritime surveillance system using light vessels. Perhaps it is not only the external landscape that is changing, but also the inner image that many had of a Spain that was always welcoming, now overwhelmed by a crisis that is, in fact, many crises rolled into one.