On Ceuta, Sánchez is taking an increasingly implausible line

Madrid. It was a long parliamentary session on Thursday morning in the Spanish Congress of Deputies. After nearly a month’s holiday and a recent radio interview, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez finally appeared before Parliament to report on the crisis in Ceuta. Over six hours of heated debate, yet not a single brick was chipped away from the impasse pitting the ministers’ bunker on one side against the various opposition parties on the other – including the diverse allies who still support the majority but who, on the issue of Ceuta, are proving increasingly reluctant to buy into Sánchez’s version of events.

Even following the revelations of the previous day – with the publication of a police report detailing the direct and indirect responsibilities of the Moroccan security forces in the (unarmed, certainly, but traumatic) invasion of the Spanish city – the Prime Minister maintains the same stance. A stance that defies the thought experiments of the most advanced physics, as it presupposes the coexistence of opposing realities, much like Schrödinger’s cat—both alive and dead. He continues to claim that there was an attack on Spain’s ‘territorial integrity’, but, although it is clear that the attack originated from Moroccan territory, Sánchez dismisses any responsibility on the part of Rabat, whilst the police report rules out the mafia theory and points the finger at official law enforcement officers, whether in uniform or in plain clothes.

The Prime Minister avoids a direct confrontation with the investigators, but denies everything, framing it as a matter of textual interpretation. He also avoids a direct attack on the secret services, whilst continuing to maintain that the government was not informed of what was about to happen. Yet the reports highlighting the risks are in the newspapers. He promises to declassify them all – those from the last few weeks – and applause breaks out from the Socialist benches. The only one not applauding is Margarita Robles, the Defence Minister. From the very outset, she has insisted that the information was available and that the government was in possession of it. Photographers and cameras have caught her looking passive and visibly annoyed, which certainly clashed with the enthusiasm of the others.

Another strong argument in support of the theory of a Moroccan hybrid attack lies in the various claims of sovereignty over Ceuta and Melilla made this month by at least two ministers in the Rabat government. And it was here that the parliamentary hearing perhaps held its only real surprise. Sánchez revealed that on 21 August the government summoned the Moroccan ambassador over those ‘unacceptable statements’. What the opposition finds unacceptable is that the summoning of an ambassador should be carried out ‘in secret’, as the leader of the People’s Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, put it. What conclusions will they have reached? And that is not all, because within moments the newspapers’ fact-checks were also in: on 21 August, Ambassador Kerima Benyaich was not in Spain. The news forced the Foreign Office to clarify that they had spoken to the chargé d’affaires.

These were the ‘high points’ of the lengthy plenary session – the moments when the discussion at least managed to stay on topic. The rest was at the mercy of a rambling discussion on grand schemes, with a few tidbits worthy of a popular science magazine. To emphasise Ceuta’s Spanish character, Sánchez began by recalling the origin of the two bronze lions flanking the gates of the parliament building: bronze cast in 1865 using cannons captured from Moroccan troops during the African War (a remark that his supporters on the academic and postcolonial left can only forgive in someone like Sánchez).

He also spoke about the 2003 war in Iraq, which was based on false evidence; he defended the increase in defence spending, stating that he was not investing in defence but rather “in security”; He also quoted remarks made in 2012 by former Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy (of the People’s Party) regarding good relations with Morocco, as if there had not been another invasion of Ceuta in 2021 in the meantime. The session continued amid interventions from the far left—which repeatedly brought up Israel—and from Catalan separatists who, even when the discussion concerned the 140 deaths off the coast of Ceuta, felt compelled to emphasize the suffering of the Catalan people.

Finally, Sánchez even accused Europe of ‘lack of ambition’ when Spain joined the then European Economic Community 40 years ago. He believes it was a mistake to keep Ceuta and Melilla out of the customs union and has promised to ‘Europeanise’ them once and for all. Among the measures announced are an increased Frontex presence and the two cities’ admission to the European Committee of the Regions. The ever-reliable Ignacio Cembrero, a leading expert on the complex Spanish-Moroccan relations, pointed out in the newspaper El Confidencial that all this would give Brussels a greater say over the EU’s only land border with Africa. And this, he says, could further irritate Morocco.