The crisis in Ceuta reached yesterday Tuesday the headquarters of the European Parliament in Strasbourg in a debate that focused on the community migration policy and the hybrid attacks of third countries. The Commissioner for Immigration and Home Affairs, Magnus Brunner, boasted about the results of strengthening the EU borders but acknowledged that “we must redouble our efforts.”
Alberto Núñez Feijóo has made a small pause with the Ceuta crisis to also focus on other problems that worry Spaniards, such as housing. In this regard, the leader of the PP traveled this Tuesday along with José Luis Martínez-Almeida to visit a public housing development for rent in Madrid and recalled his commitments to ease prices if he comes to Government, which include, among other things, drastic tax cuts for young people and the construction of more supply.
Italy will maintain border controls with Spain for another fifteen days. The Minister of the Interior, Matteo Piantedosi, decided this Tuesday to again extend the partial suspension of Schengen, which affects air and sea borders between the two countries, and communicated the measure to the European Commission and the other EU Interior Ministers. Almost immediately, the Spanish Ministry of the Interior announced that it would also maintain the same measure for travelers coming from Italy by air and sea.
“It is going to be costly to restore normality in Ceuta,” they acknowledge in Moncloa after the crisis triggered in the autonomous city by the influx of more than 70,000 immigrants on July 30 and 31, despite the fact that a large number returned to Morocco in the following days. Pedro Sánchez expressed confidence on Monday in “having the situation stabilized by the end of the year,” since the unified command to resolve this crisis, assumed by the Canarian minister Ángel Víctor Torres, was decreed until next December 31. And the Government does not want to downplay the situation, but they emphasize that just as this temporary deadline can be extended, it can also be shortened. “Our goal is to shorten the deadlines,” they stress in Moncloa, to complete the reception or return procedures for the immigrants. “Each week we are going a little faster,” they defend.
The Ceuta crisis reached the European Parliament this Tuesday in a debate on the humanitarian situation and the protection of the European Union’s borders. The Commissioner for Home Affairs and Migration, Magnus Brunner, acknowledged before the MEPs that the crisis in the autonomous city “shows that we need to double our efforts.” Brunner praised the European migration policy and said that the “return system is working better” and that “Europe has made significant progress regarding illegal immigration,” but there is work to be done.
The Supreme Court judge Pablo Llarena has rejected the request of former president Carles Puigdemont to apply amnesty after the European justice ruling that endorsed the law of oblivion, and therefore also rejects nullifying the national arrest warrant against the Junts leader.
Felipe VI made his first public reference to Ceuta this Tuesday since the migration crisis of last July 31. The King took advantage of his speech during the opening of the academic year at the National School of Civil Protection, in Rivas-Vaciamadrid, to acknowledge the work being carried out by the forces deployed in the autonomous city in a situation he described as of “extraordinary complexity.”
The Investigative Court Number 6 of Ceuta has agreed to refer the case opened against the Government delegate in the autonomous city, Miguel Ángel Pérez Triano, to the National Court, following the express request of the National Court instructor María Tardón.
At the Trampolín beach, which since the beginning of the Ceuta crisis became the symbol of the migratory overflow in the face of the authorities’ helplessness, competition has emerged. On the other side of the desalination plant – a critical infrastructure for the city’s water supply – shanties are expanding at a dizzying pace on Benítez beach, becoming increasingly robust. The huts, built with materials their inhabitants collect from forests, streets, or dumps, are gaining ground on the shore as the immigrants settle in them, although they do not lose hope of entering a reception center. But how is it possible that a new Lampedusa is sprouting in Ceuta, 45 days after the massive entry, when 4,300 humanitarian beds have been opened and the procedures for expulsions have supposedly reached “cruising speed”?
The first one, right to the point. “What’s wrong with you that you’re scared of the neighboring government and for what reasons?” This is the question that a Ceuta resident, Antonio, angrily asked Pedro Sánchez, bluntly, during the interview on El Intermedio, La Sexta, which the Prime Minister gave on Monday night. The head of the Executive, however, defended the actions of Mohamed VI’s regime in the face of the influx of immigrants that overwhelmed the autonomous city on July 30 and 31, and their cooperation to resolve a situation that is going to last a long time.
