Sánchez puts Philip VI in the crosshairs
BarcelonaPedro Sánchez believes that Felipe VI should travel to Ceuta and Melilla. Pedro Sánchez notes that Felipe VI has never been to Ceuta or Melilla. Pedro Sánchez announces that Felipe VI will go to Ceuta and Melilla. And Pedro Sánchez asks that the Royal Household respond if Felipe VI agrees to go to Ceuta and Melilla. Four responses during the interview on Cadena SER this Monday that highlight the tensions between Moncloa and Zarzuela in managing the Ceuta crisis. The President of the Spanish government could have limited himself to deflecting – as he does on many other issues – but he has preferred to make his executive's position crystal clear. He has already decided that the king will make the visit and it is only under discussion when it will be: "When the conditions are met".
A few days ago it was the Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, who stressed that "it is the government that decides the king's agenda" and now it is Sánchez who insists on it, at a time when the opposition speculates about the blocking of the visit by Moncloa. Felipe VI, therefore, will go to Ceuta when Sánchez considers it the right time. But the socialist leader has gone a step further by recalling that "the king has been reigning for more than 20 years [in reality he has been reigning for 12, but it has been almost 20 years since the last visit by a Spanish king, Juan Carlos I in 2007]" and until now he has not set foot in the autonomous cities, despite having experienced other migratory crises. A situation he has taken it upon himself to compare with his own: "I am the current president of the government who has gone there for the first time in democracy".
"The king has been reigning for more than 20 years [he has been for 12, since 2014]. How many times has he been to Ceuta and Melilla?", Sánchez asked from the SER microphones, achieving basically two things. The first, to downplay the current crisis which, in fact, he has compared to the one Ceuta suffered in 2021 and also to those that have recurrently affected the Canary Islands. The second, to shrug off responsibilities. "The king has been reigning for more than 20 years [he has been for 12], and I have been governing for 8 years", he insisted, remarking that his predecessor, Mariano Rajoy (PP), also did not consider it appropriate for the monarch to ever visit the autonomous cities.
Sources from the Royal Household explain to ARA that, for now, the matter is not being discussed. But Sánchez has already put the king in his sights in case it occurs to those around Felipe VI that it is a good idea to convey to the PP or Vox that the PSOE is to blame for him not going to Ceuta.
The fact is that, despite Sánchez's comparisons, the current crisis is unprecedented, due to its magnitude (70,000 people crossed the border between July 30 and 31); the deaths (more than a hundred, a large part of whom on Spanish territory) and the entrapment, a month later, of some 5,000 people according to Spanish government data. A cocktail that will probably allow the diplomatic reticences that the Spanish government – whether led by the PP or the PSOE – always has when planning high-level visits to Ceuta or Melilla to be overcome, due to the frontal opposition generated in Morocco, which continues to claim the annexation of the two cities to its territory.