Sixty days after the massive entry of people across the Ceuta border, the Government delegate made his resignation official this Monday, acknowledging for the first time that the institution he has led until now was aware of the "serious migration crisis" that was brewing. In a statement without questions, Miguel Ángel Pérez Triano explained that "from the first moment" they transmitted what was happening to the central Executive, asked for "measures and reinforcements" and issued "reports and daily communications since long before July 30", but argued that their powers "are what they are."
In this way, the former general secretary of the PSOE in the autonomous city - who also announced that he is leaving politics - implicitly placed the responsibility for the lack of security personnel in the flow from Morocco in the hands of the Ministry of the Interior. The realization that the CNI - dependent on Defense - had warned his chief of staff of the imminence of an assault and his refusal to admit that he had knowledge had left him in an untenable position.
"Since the Supreme Court ruling [published on July 8] we warned of the problem that the impossibility of rejection at the border would entail and the possible call effect," Pérez Triano explained this Monday in his public intervention. "We even proposed a change to the Organic Immigration Law even though we knew that the parliamentary situation made it almost impossible. We saw the situation getting worse, we communicated it every day and in that sense we were working with the different ministries, although nothing at any time allowed us to glimpse what would happen later," he added.
In the Executive they explain that a few days ago the Government delegate "expressed his need not to continue in office." They consider it to be "a human and personal decision after many weeks of immense work." Until now, La Moncloa had publicly defended his work and, in public, had expressed its trust in him. But in Ceuta his departure was taken for granted for days.
Socialist sources indicate that in Ceuta the name of the person who is acting as a substitute is David de la Encina, a native of the autonomous city and who was mayor of El Puerto de Santa María between 2015 and 2019 and later held responsibilities as a provincial deputy in Cádiz. In 2023 he left the political front line.
Declassification
Pérez Triano was on the ropes after the declassification, on September 9, of the documents and communications of the secret services in the days before the migratory avalanche of July 30. The day before, a CNI agent notified by messages and call to his then chief of staff, Gonzalo Sanz, of the imminent massive assault on the El Tarajal border.
After this information was revealed, the Government delegate stated that "everyone" knew about the calls on networks to jump the border, and that the WhatsApp message sent by a member of the CNI to his chief of staff "is not an alert", because these "are not issued to a Government Delegation and much less to a chief of staff." "The alerts are raised to the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of the Interior and are formalized. That is not an alert; it is a comment, a conversation," he said.
Gonzalo Sanz resigned from his position due to the "evident incompatibility" between his version that he did pass on the information and what Triano maintained, who at that time denied that he had knowledge. In his resignation letter he explained that the information sent to him by the CNI "was transmitted by me to the delegate himself that same day", something that contrasted with "the various statements by the delegate in different media in which he claims not to have received information from me."
Previously, on August 25, the Government Delegation in Ceuta had issued a statement to officially contradict the head of Defense, Margarita Robles, who that day declared in Congress that the CNI did warn before the massive entry of immigrants on July 30. In the letter that denied part of the central Executive itself, it was stated that "at no time was any report alerted of what was going to happen" received, in line with the version of the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, and that the only thing they had was "daily data on the increase in entries by sea communicated through the corresponding channels."
In addition to finally acknowledging that there were alerts in the days before the avalanche, Pérez Triano denounced this Monday that he is resigning from all his positions in the midst of "a very hostile environment" in which "some have preferred to take a cut," although he avoided making direct accusations. "Ceuta deserves to be a matter of State and not a setting for electoral calculations," he simply noted.
He also said he had suffered "a campaign of constant harassment," with "insults, threats and even a wreath placed on the door" and that his family "does not deserve this pressure." As a self-criticist, the only thing he admitted was that "things could have been done better, in a different way or faster," but he stressed that "the easy thing" would have been to leave on July 30 and that since then he has been working "silently and tirelessly" for his city.
