Política

As announced a few weeks ago, Junts per Catalunya has once again submitted this Wednesday in Congress the bill to delegate immigration-related powers to the Generalitat that it agreed with the PSOE last year and that was rejected in September 2025 by the votes of the PP, Vox, Podemos, and two deputies from Sumar. The post-convergence party thus recovers an initiative they consider a current commitment with the socialists, doing so amid the migration crisis in Ceuta, while maintaining their rejection that Catalonia should have to host minors who have recently arrived in the autonomous city.

The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, will finally appear before the Plenary of the Congress on September 3 to report on the Government’s management of the migration crisis in Ceuta, following the serious incidents recorded since July 30. The setting of the date culminates an undisguised standoff in the Board of Spokespersons, where the initial intention of La Moncloa — which requested to set the appearance for the 9th — clashed with the pressure from several parliamentary groups, led by the PNV. Jeltzale sources have demanded that the meeting be “immediate” and “without the need to reschedule already planned appearances,” once the “situation of interest for national security” in the autonomous city was declared.

The royal decree approved this Tuesday by the Council of Ministers and published this Wednesday in the Official State Gazette (BOE) that declares the “situation of interest for national security in the city of Ceuta,” with a single command and crisis committee, which will initially be in effect until December 31, does not imply an assumption of the limited powers of the autonomous city by the central Government. In other words, far from implying a kind of intervention, like that which would be entailed by the application of article 155 of the Constitution, the Government maintains the constitutionally and statutorily established powers but assumes control of the management of the material and human resources necessary to resolve the crisis.

The Government’s solution to the open crisis in Ceuta still does not fit all the pieces. Neither the solemnity of a National Security Council nor the repeated proclamations that “Ceuta is today the heart of Spain” managed yesterday to hide the coordination difficulties that emerge within the coalition Government. Not only between PSOE and Sumar, regarding Morocco’s responsibility, but also within the very socialist core of the Executive.

The Minister of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory, Ángel Víctor Torres, who has been appointed as the highest authority in the unified command decreed in response to the Ceuta migration crisis, fully supports the version of his Interior counterpart, Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska, regarding the lack of prior warnings before the border assault, a version that contradicts that offered by another government colleague, Defense Minister Margarita Robles, who on Tuesday stated that there had been prior communications from the CNI, although not sufficiently precise or urgent.

Why not send an ES-Alert during the heavy rains in Tarragona last weekend? That is the question behind the latest controversy surrounding the Generalitat Government upon their return from vacation. Those downpours caused 11 injuries – one critical and another serious -, flooded streets and building basements, as well as closed roads, interrupted Rodalies service, and evacuated campsites. According to Salvador Illa’s Executive, the alert to mobile phones was not sent because the emergency level was below the threshold required to use these mass warnings.

The Moroccan Minister of Islamic Affairs, Ahmed Toufiq, has once again raised Morocco’s claim over Ceuta and Melilla, doing so on the occasion of a religious festival presided over by King Mohammed VI, which was also attended by Crown Prince Moulay Hassan and Prime Minister Aziz Ajanuch. This is not the first time a minister from the Alaouite country has called to “liberate” these two Spanish autonomous cities: the Minister of Justice, Abdellatif Ouahbi, had already done so.

The Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, using a report from the Defense Staff (EMAD), has attributed the arrival of more than 80,000 people in just 48 hours to Ceuta to a “self-management of individuals” who came “spontaneously” to the border attracted by messages on social networks warning of the lack of obstacles on the border perimeter. With this thesis, the Government focuses on the previous movements on social networks, which for Robles are “an essential instrument” of hybrid attacks thanks to disinformation campaigns. “Let’s not deceive ourselves. There are issues we will never know,” warned the Defense Minister about the origin of the assault, although she immediately pointed out that “interested actors” are using, or have even favored, this crisis with the “clear political purpose” of “destabilizing” Spain.

The Government has approved in its first Council of Ministers after the summer break two draft bills to reform the Spanish system of immigration and asylum and adapt it to the new European Pact on Migration and Asylum. The Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, presented both initiatives at the subsequent press conference as an attempt to combine an “agile, effective, and orderly” management of migratory flows with the maintenance of guarantees for migrants. The reform, he added, will also allow speeding up the processing of international protection applications and improving “the necessary management of our borders to guarantee security in our country.”

The Ceuta crisis has revealed contradictory criteria within the Government this Tuesday regarding the intelligence information available in the days prior to the massive entry of migrants on July 30 and 31. While the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, has assured in Congress that the 25 agents of the National Intelligence Center (CNI) stationed in the autonomous city have shared and analyzed with the State Security Forces and the Government Delegation the information they had gathered, Fernando Grande-Marlaska has maintained at La Moncloa that “there was no report indicating that on July 30 what finally happened was going to occur.”