Former Prime Minister José María Aznar has visited the autonomous city of Ceuta and has asserted national sovereignty while criticizing the Government for allowing the “violation of Spain’s territorial integrity.”
Aznar linked what happened at the border to “a foreign policy that, in his opinion, ‘has left Spain isolated at the mercy of any extortion.’” It is in this sense that he has called for “a change in the political direction of the country.”
José María Aznar
“Anyone who violates our borders has no right to remain in Spain: national sovereignty does not take vacations”
Aznar has defended the position held by Juan Jesús Vivas himself, president of Ceuta, and the leader of the Popular Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who argue that all those who entered through the El Tarajal border almost a month ago should be returned to Morocco, whether they are adult Moroccans, minors, or asylum seekers. “Anyone who violates our borders has no right to remain in Spain,” Aznar declared, adding that “national sovereignty does not take vacations.”
The former Prime Minister was received at the government headquarters of the autonomous city by its president, Juan Jesús Vivas, on the street where some neighbors cheered Aznar — “if you had been here this would not have happened,” an emotional neighbor told him.
Once inside the Government headquarters, President Vivas lavished praise on President Aznar, saying he has been key in the last thirty years of the autonomous city’s history, recalling that he incorporated Ceuta into the autonomous communities commissions and the Fiscal and Financial Policy Council, two bodies from which both Ceuta and Melilla had initially been excluded because strictly speaking they are not communities but autonomous cities with limited powers.
Of course, Vivas also recalled the events on Perejil Island where, he said, Aznar’s government used all the State’s resources to guarantee Spain’s territorial integrity. An idea shared by Aznar who, throughout his speech, conveyed that the current government has not done this task well. Vivas shared this impression.
The president of the FAES Foundation emphasized that the one on the 30th must be “the last avalanche” and considered it “urgent” to permanently stabilize the “most exposed” border, because besides being Spanish it is also European.
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“Here only firmness is allowed, because weakness is and will always be provocative,” Aznar concluded, who a few months ago, facing the corrosion of the current government, launched that famous phrase: “he who can, should.” Someone already has.
The PSOE has reacted harshly to the visit and has accused the PP of sending the “lord of war” to Ceuta, referring to Aznar, whom they attribute a “grim and disastrous record” in crisis management, with references to Perejil islet and the Prestige. The socialists also reproached the former president for never making an institutional visit to Ceuta during his time at La Moncloa and for returning now, 24 years later, to “do the usual: ask for votes.”
For the PSOE, the visit responds to a PP strategy to “add fuel to the conflict” and demand a change of Government. The socialists have accused Feijóo of having “delegated his functions to Aznar” and considered that the Popular Party has turned Ceuta into “a new stage for confrontation with the Government of Spain.”
The socialist leadership contrasted this attitude with the Government’s actions, which they attribute to having allocated “all the necessary material and human resources” to Ceuta. And they criticized the PP’s position on the distribution of migrant minors: “It is very easy to be patriotic by wrapping yourself in a flag, but when solidarity has been requested from PP communities to host vulnerable boys and girls, they have closed the doors to Ceuta,” they reproached.
The PSOE concluded that the PP “stopped being a state party a long time ago” and accused the Populars of putting “confrontation and electoral gain above the interests of citizens.”
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