The declassification of the reports carried out by the Moncloa on the alerts prior to the invasion of Ceuta is only the beginning of a long crisis that, in the Popular Party, they believe will end up wearing down the Government both politically and judicially. For this reason, Alberto Núñez Feijóo has conveyed an express order to all his barons and members of the steering committee to act with serenity and prudence, without improvisations and without communicative errors that could cause the main opposition party to lose a very well-written speech. The popular ranks will "set a position" every day, but with statements measured by the national leadership. The opposition leader's line of argument is based on the conviction that more revelations about the warnings prior to the mass entry will come to light.
Since the Government published the documents last Wednesday, several voices from the Popular Party have openly suggested that there are more communications from the intelligence services and Security Forces and Corps that warned of an entry like the one that finally occurred. The party's spokesperson in Congress, Ester Muñoz, cast doubt on the content of the documents that have not yet been made public just a few minutes after the Moncloa declassified the files: "If this is what the Government has come up with, which it believes does not affect it, we cannot imagine everything there is that has not been declassified," she stated. In Genoa they perceived this possibility from the first moment and, since then, other members of the party privately insist that there are more writings yet to be known and that their content could be even more serious than those already revealed.
What the Government did last Wednesday is, for the PP, "a controlled explosion" but they do not doubt that "it will have new consequences" because they are convinced that the Executive is measuring their reactions in dribs and drabs even knowing that "all the information" they have "is going to come out." They support this perception in that, after the investigation opened in the National Court, the activity of some members of the Council of Ministers seems to focus more on their judicial defense than on politics. In fact, Feijóo already suggested to Fernando Grande-Marlaska during the extraordinary appearance on Sánchez's management of the situation in Ceuta that he was acting "on the advice of his lawyers."
In the PP they take political responsibilities for granted and, increasingly, also judicial ones. Now, popular sources maintain, "the Interior and Defense commanders are competing among themselves to see who has judicial responsibility" for not having heeded the previous warnings and for the deaths that occurred during the assault on the border. Along these lines they interpret the statements of Margarita Robles in the commission, where she defended that the National Intelligence Center (CNI) did the work that is "required" of it in relation to irregular immigration, asserting that "they shared the information." Likewise, they point to the letter that Marlaska issued to the director of the National Police to request explanations about the existence of the report that the force sent to the judge of the National Court. In said letter, the minister stated that he had no record of any document that attributed to Morocco the authorship or coordination of the avalanche of people. Both are "movements directed in search of protection in the criminal field," they insist from Genoa.
Faced with this open internal war within the Government, the PP is committed to caution and internal coordination to maximize the impact of its criticism. That is why Feijóo sent a message to all his barons and his steering committee: he does not want "brilliant quotation marks" to be granted to the media that divert attention from the wear and tear that, in his opinion, the Executive is suffering due to the management of the situation in the autonomous city. This is a similar strategy but even more measured than the one they followed when the various legal cases that affect the environment of Pedro Sánchez and his party began. In fact, Génova considers that the Executive is in a "moment of extreme weakness", and believes that in this context there is no room for improvisation on the part of the main opposition party, which aspires to become an alternative government.
Although they do not stop demanding that Sánchez dissolve the Cortes and call elections, the truth is that in the Popular Party there is no longer a rush for an immediate appointment with the polls. The Ceuta issue, they maintain, "makes all the parties agree against half the Government", that is, against the socialist part of the coalition, because they consider that "even Sumar doubts Morocco's role" in what happened in Ceuta. So they believe that everything that becomes known will deepen the deterioration of relations between the Executive and the political groups that supported his arrival at Moncloa. Gabriel Rufián himself, ERC spokesperson, asked Sánchez who "he was going to join" to revalidate the presidency, since he "doesn't have the numbers" in view of several polls that attribute to the sum of PP and Vox a majority of more than 200 seats.
