Yesterday, Joaquín Vera, the indispensable eyes of La Vanguardia in Ceuta, wrote on these pages that the residents define their city as a powder keg about to explode. Beyond what journalists can confirm and report, there are also multiple direct testimonies on social networks from the Ceutíes themselves, insisting on the overcrowding, unsanitary conditions, and insecurity they suffer in their streets. At the same time, there have also been reports of the city’s collapse in the justice system due to the increase in complaints related to all kinds of crimes – against property, assaults… – that have been occurring since the invasion on July 30 and 31. Given this, it is clear that the term powder keg is accurate, as it refers to something tangible, although only those who live there or are displaced can attest to it with firsthand knowledge. The rest of us, from the Peninsula, watch the bulls from the sidelines.
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That powder keg is undoubtedly the most pressing and urgent. Only that in the short term it is unsolvable for a Government that cannot even offer guarantees about the numbers of immigrants – adults and minors – who have been trapped in Ceuta. Announcing safe and dignified spaces for all of them costs as little as putting it in the mouth of any minister. Creating them requires time and a capacity to mobilize resources that is sorely missed.
The Government aims for impossible balances with its decisions on Ceuta
On the other hand, the total repatriation that has been promised is, by all accounts, impossible. And in the case of minors, legal guarantees will prevent the return of most of them no matter how much the government discourse has changed or even turned completely around on the matter. So sooner or later, for some normality to return to Ceuta, if it ever does, the transfer and distribution of adults and minors across the Peninsula will be inevitable.
Only that from the Strait onwards, the situation also resembles a powder keg. More political and declarative than factual, but a powder keg nonetheless. With most of the territorial power in the hands of the right and the general and municipal elections already in sight, the arrival of immigrants stationed in Ceuta to the Peninsula, regardless of their age and added to the ongoing extraordinary regularization, will widen the leak in the keel of the socialist ship. Not even Catalonia, in the hands of the PSC, is in a position to help the central Government on this issue, unless the Generalitat Government itself intends to harm itself.
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The Pedro Sánchez Government, according to the accurate analysis also from yesterday by Lola García, aims for impossible balances with its decisions on Ceuta. Not to upset Morocco, not to inflame the autonomous city more than necessary, not to give the EU excuses to isolate Spain, and most importantly, not to completely lose the favor of national public opinion. A dish with too many ingredients that the Government is bound to choke on, making it a hostage – sooner rather than later – to its unfulfillable promises in resolving the crisis and driving it fully into multiple contradictions and reversals. The latter is the worst of evils in order to maintain some credibility on such a thorny issue as immigration.
The summer before the US elections, I traveled to the United States thanks to La Vanguardia. I visited 21 states where Trump ended up winning. In all of them, Republican propaganda reproduced images of the border with Mexico with thousands and thousands of immigrants trying to cross it. A single word presided over the photographs that multiplied on social networks, in brochures, and in TV spots: invasion. Vox, and also the PP, already have the domestic version of those images thanks to the events in Ceuta. And they will be one of the legs on which the next electoral cycle will walk. The other will be corruption cases. We will see, in the case of immigration, tons of demagogy, no doubt about it. Only that the base images, like the voice clips of the Ceutíes, will be real. Ceuta has not only spoiled the Government’s summer. It has darkened its future with black clouds that will not clear before the elections. Regardless of whether the problem remains encapsulated in Ceuta or, as everything seems to indicate will be inevitable, ends up being transferred to the Peninsula.
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