Morocco, just like Libya. For Sánchez, the rule is to deny, deny, deny

The events in Ceuta have opened up yet another rift between the police and the Spanish government – a split which this time could have fatal consequences for the stability of Pedro Sánchez’s government. The daily newspaper El Español revealed yesterday that the judiciary had reportedly ignored a report by the Spanish police accusing the Moroccan secret services of orchestrating the invasion on 30 and 31 July in the Spanish exclave, which was targeted by over 70,000 migrants. The Home Secretary, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, said he was “surprised” that the police had not alerted the government, which for over a month has insisted on defending the Moroccan government’s good faith. Following a meeting held late yesterday morning with officers from CENIF – the immigration intelligence unit that had drafted the report – the Director-General of the Police, Francisco Pardo Piqueras, shifted the blame onto María Tardón, the judge investigating the events in Ceuta, who he claimed had ordered the officers not to inform their superiors, including Pardo himself, and stated that the report mentioned that Moroccan plainclothes secret agents had accompanied the migrants right up to Ceuta’s border but, according to Pardo’s surprising argument, this would not imply any responsibility on the part of the Moroccan government. However, El Mundo reported clear quotations from the report: “pre-planned”, “active guidance by Moroccan forces” and an operation “beyond the reach” of organised crime groups. These conclusions also corroborate the allegations made at the end of August by the Jabaroot hacker group, which had blamed Abdellatif Hammouchi, director of the Moroccan intelligence services, for the events in Ceuta.

The buck-passing between the government, the police and the investigators is something we have seen before in Spain, as is the meticulous care with which Madrid ensures that the Moroccan government remains above suspicion. Curiously, as the leader of the People’s Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has revealed, the Sánchez government seems ‘more concerned with defending Morocco than Spain’.

Libya has been at the centre of a situation bearing similarities to the current events involving Morocco. Over the past year, in at least two separate instances, the Spanish Civil Guard has carried out investigations and seizures of weapons and drugs destined for Benghazi, whilst the government in Madrid was quick to play down the incidents. The most recent case occurred on 5 May, when the cargo ship Arconian, flying the flag of the Comoros, was intercepted by the Civil Guard off the coast of the Canary Islands with 30 tonnes of cocaine on board bound for Benghazi, in eastern Libya. This was the largest drug seizure in Spain’s history, and the cargo’s final destination – Benghazi, one of the Mediterranean’s main hubs for channelling drugs to Europe – provided more than sufficient grounds for suspicion. Yet, the day after the seizure, it was Grande-Marlaska himself who played down Libya’s role during a press conference. On that occasion, the Spanish Minister of the Interior claimed that the vessel belonged to the Moroccan-Dutch mafia and that the cargo was to have been transferred to other vessels at sea rather than in Benghazi. At the same time, a letter addressed to the Spanish government and signed by Yousef Ibrahim al Aqouri, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Tobruk Parliament, had threatened to sever diplomatic relations between the two countries if Madrid did not put an end to rumours regarding Benghazi’s alleged involvement in drug trafficking.

The reason for Sánchez’s eagerness not to upset Libya too much lies in Spain’s dependence on the North African country’s energy resources; Madrid imports up to 13 per cent of its national crude oil consumption from the Libyan El Sharara field – around 300,000 barrels a day extracted by the Spanish company Repsol. In August 2024, the excessive zeal of the Guardia Civil – which had issued an arrest warrant for the deputy commander-in-chief of Cyrenaica, Saddam Haftar, as part of an investigation into arms trafficking – led to the temporary detention of the Libyan leader in Naples, Italy. Haftar was released shortly afterwards in a dramatic escape, which is suspected to have been facilitated by the Spanish government. The Libyan leader, however, did not take it well and shut down the el Sharara oil wells for several months, causing considerable damage to Madrid.

It remains to be seen whether Madrid will decide to accuse a strategic partner such as Morocco, especially given that Sánchez himself, in 2021, was the victim of the scandal involving the Israeli Pegasus spyware used by the Moroccan secret services – an incident that may have made the Spanish Prime Minister even more vulnerable to blackmail. It seems that Sánchez has no choice but to follow the maxim: deny, deny, deny.