Ceuta: the crisis that can definitively take Pedro Sánchez
MadridPedro Sánchez has had to face many crises since he arrived at La Moncloa in 2018. The Process, the pandemic, the outbreak of corruption cases in the PSOE, and the proliferation of new wars in the international context. The Ceuta crisis is the latest, but while Sánchez has overcome all those he has experienced so far, the massive entry of immigrants on July 30 has overwhelmed the Spanish government. The week of appearances by a dozen ministers to account for the management of the crisis has only created a sense of lack of control. With Sánchez, moreover, practically disappeared.
Humanitarian and social crisis
The outbreak of violence in Ceuta was unfortunately predictable considering that for a month, hundreds of people have been wandering through the autonomous city without their basic needs met, and residents cannot live their normal lives. Why was the provision of spaces not accelerated? Why was there not sufficient police deployment to protect the migrant camp that they burned? The worst hypothesis is that the Spanish government did not activate basic infrastructures immediately because it expected the immigrants to leave on their own. A decision that would have already entrenched a humanly unsustainable situation and turned Ceuta into a social powder keg.
Political crisis
The Spanish government has not been able to agree on a single political narrative to try to explain the crisis. The week has been marked by the clash of versions between the Interior and Defense ministries over whether or not the CNI warned of what could happen. When Robles says yes, she is only trying to save the jobs of the intelligence services, but she puts the entire Spanish government in check, because if there was information about a surge in entries and also messages on social networks, why wasn't action taken? Nor have they been able to explain why it took them a month to activate the single command and convene the National Security Council. In fact, it has now become evident that they had not done so previously.
The defense of Morocco
The government's account of the origin of the massive influx of immigrants has generated doubts on both the right and the left of Congress. The ministers have attributed the events to the viralization of fake news about the Supreme Court's ruling that rejected pushbacks in case of entering by swimming. However, they have not clarified where the coordinated action came from – beyond a reference to the "far-right international" – and they have indeed absolved Morocco of responsibility for the crisis, despite the fact that it was supposed to control the other side of the border. There is a hypothesis to explain this stance: the executive fears that the same thing will happen again – Morocco collaborated so that August 15th would not be repeated – and, at the same time, it does not want to highlight that Sánchez's commitment to a policy of appeasement with the Alawite country after Arancha González Laya's departure from the Foreign Ministry – remember the shift on Western Sahara – has not fully worked.
It remains to be seen whether the Spanish government will restore order as the days go by, but this crisis is undoubtedly a torpedo to the image of a progressive executive that Moncloa has wanted to project, which has championed the rights of migrants, especially with regularization. And it is also electoral fuel for the far-right. Furthermore, it adds to the other challenges the government already had to face: corruption cases, financing, amnesty, or the presentation of budgets. In short, Sánchez finds himself in a devilish scenario from which he will hardly be able to emerge unscathed.
