The Ceuta crisis must be closed now

MadridThe Ceuta crisis must end now, as soon as possible. Each passing day the government loses credibility due to the demonstrated inefficiency and the delay with which it reacted. It is easy to ask for immediate solutions and difficult to carry them out, and yet it is unbearable to witness the daily drama suffered by the city, its inhabitants, and the immigrants who still harbor any hope of reaching the Iberian Peninsula and being able to settle there. Under current conditions, I find that very few will achieve this purpose. And, as the days go by, the feeling of improvisation and impotence grows. The images from this past Friday give an idea of the practically absolute lack of control in which all parties involved are living, including the State security forces. It is necessary to increase the number of participants in the operations to end the prevailing disorder. Not enough is being done, nor at the proper pace.

the demonstrated inefficiency and by the delay with which it reacted. It is easy to ask for immediate solutions and difficult to carry them out, and yet it is unbearable to witness the daily drama suffered by the city, its inhabitants, and the immigrants who still harbor any hope of reaching the Iberian Peninsula and being able to settle there. Under current conditions, I find that very few will achieve this purpose. And, as the days go by, the feeling of improvisation and impotence grows. The images from this past Friday give an idea of the practically absolute lack of control in which all parties involved are living, including the State security forces. It is necessary to increase the number of participants in the operations to end the prevailing disorder. Not enough is being done, nor at the proper pace.

It is not a pandemic. Those days it seemed we were getting used to the daily number of deaths and to living locked up. In the Ceuta crisis, there were already too many fatalities on the first day, and at any moment a more serious conflict can break out, because one cannot live –nobody can– with the current level of pressure. The images from this week, those of the immigrants running like an ungovernable mass towards the camp at the port of Ceuta, were quite impressive. Here there is no single command that works; this is a mess. The aspiration to have under control the thousands of immigrants who remain scattered –it is difficult to obtain a reliable figure– does not seem like an easy goal.

I do not like seeing military uniforms on the streets, but perhaps it will be necessary for them to intervene, and in a sufficient number of personnel. What cannot happen is that we have to hear shots –I imagine in the air, but with live fire– from police officers overwhelmed by the running of the protesters, while the population of Ceuta watches from their windows. We again saw the ground of the streets full of shoes, sneakers, and flip-flops –especially flip-flops, which is the most pathetic footwear in this situation–, just as on July 30th and 31st we contemplated similar images on the beaches. Many immigrants arrived on land barefoot, having left behind hundreds of espadrilles, which now float pathetically on the waves. Volunteers and police or civil guards collected them in black bags, and I do not know what they did with this testimony of the need and misfortune of so many people.

Responsibility

We must all be guilty, because in this matter almost no one has lived up to the circumstances. I am referring, obviously, to the institutions and the parties. Many of us are worried about the rise in the expectations of the far right –here and generally in the democratic West–, but what I find more and more frequently is people telling me that they have no desire to go vote. Most of them believe that things can only get worse, but they also do not see any incentives to become a brake capable of preventing this political and electoral evolution. The other day, a friend with whom I share a passion for cinema told me that his wife has never voted, and that he tried to in one of the last elections, but that at his polling station they were unable to find him on the list that corresponded to him. They told him to speak with an election observer and to file a formal complaint.

However, he left the polling station decided never to try to vote again. I recognize that my friend has a certain mystical air. He believes that all kinds of things happen around us that we do not perceive due to the limits of our senses. And he is not a conspiracy theorist, but he says he assumes the existence of events that are signs, which bring us messages that we often do not know how to decipher. And he has reached the conclusion that voting is just another instrument of distraction and domination. He explains it by showing himself to be certain that we are dominated by elites –not necessarily governments– that control information and manipulate it and distribute it according to their interests, which are to keep us controlled and producing to grow their businesses, while preparing the next stages of space conquest –during which they will extend their power– while the common population will continue talking about freedoms and democracy, consuming what they do not need and working themselves to the bone for many years to climb a few floors on the social ladder.

I do not know if artificial intelligence (AI) and the crisis of democracy will gradually turn us into a kind of zombies ready to renounce everything. We may not be far from losing faith in everything and having anarchism reborn as an ideological goal. The first symptom is not going to vote. A flagrant contradiction, if we claim the value that the recovery of freedoms had for us; and even more so now, when there are thousands of descendants of Spaniards who had to flee after the Civil War and are claiming their right to participate in the upcoming elections, while some Supreme Court judges suspend this possibility sine die. They do so with the argument that they could alter the will of the registered people, who are the holders of the already recognized right. It is like taking it for granted that the descendants of exiles are all left-wing and that they must be denied the opportunity to stop the most patriotic citizens, who are the ones who will surely manage next year to bring back the right to govern with authority, and who will ensure that no one crosses borders and that one can claim humanitarian treatment while trying to flee from political persecution, lack of rights, or misery.

I return to the beginning. The crisis in Ceuta calls out to us all. I must convince my mystical friend to go vote. And Sánchez and Feijóo to stop playing with the lack of energy, the calendar, and their respective electoral calculations. I pray that they have mercy on Ceuta and the immigrants –facilitating their return if they cannot be recognized as refugees–, and that they share a country discourse regarding Morocco and the European Union. And, meanwhile, that the Madrid president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, puts what could have been her penthouse at the disposal of some of the minors –those who can fit–, so that they are the ones who can get some benefit from this catalog of nonsense.