The Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, wanted this Thursday to bury the controversy over whether the National Intelligence Center (CNI) adequately warned about the risk of a massive entry of migrants into Ceuta and has acknowledged that what happened on July 30 in the autonomous city is “a phenomenon of an unforeseeable magnitude that has not occurred anywhere else.”
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After the publication yesterday of the declassified reports on the intelligence services’ alerts about the crisis in the autonomous city, which the minister has defined as an exercise of “maximum transparency” by the Government, Robles has assured that the Government “works united,” “side by side,” with “a single priority” which is Ceuta, whose citizens she has apologized to if it has not been up to the mark. She has also reiterated her staunch defense of the Spanishness of Ceuta and Melilla. “They are more Spanish than anyone,” she concluded.
Thus, the minister, in statements in Toro (Zamora), where she visited the works of the new Monte la Reina barracks, has acknowledged that from what happened at the end of July, which she insisted was due to its “unforeseeable” and “hardly achievable” magnitude and “unparalleled” in Spain or Europe, one must “learn and draw lessons” to be able to improve, and she has asked to stop looking for “discrepancies where there are none.” “You will not find me in controversies,” she warned in reference to the Government’s criticism of the CNI for limiting itself to alerting via Whatsapp the chief of staff of the Government delegate in the autonomous city about social media campaigns encouraging a massive assault on Ceuta.
When persistently asked about the actions of the CNI and the Government and the communication between both institutions, the Defense minister has maintained that everyone fulfilled their duty and pointed out that “everything that was believed could be done was done.” “In Spain, we all fulfill our duty. The Government fulfills its duty, the armed forces, the institutions, the Police, the Civil Guard (…) people fulfill their work,” she defended to warn that she will always “defend and protect the institutions of the State.” “I feel very proud of our country, our Government, the armed forces, the intelligence services, and civil society,” she insisted.
However, the Defense minister has acknowledged that “without a doubt everything can be improved.” “In life, everything must be improved, we all have to improve,” Robles said, adding that she sets out every day to “improve what she does” because there would be “nothing more terrible” than a country that “was content with what it has.”
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