Joaquín Vera, the essential eyes of La Vanguardia in Ceuta, wrote yesterday in these pages that the residents define their city as a powder keg ready to explode. There are also, beyond what journalists can confirm and tell, the multiple direct testimonies on the networks of the people of Ceuta themselves, insisting on the situation of overcrowding, unhealthiness and insecurity that they suffer in their streets. In parallel, the collapse of the city in the area of justice has also been reported due to the increase in complaints referring to all types of crimes – against property, assaults... – that have been occurring since the invasion of July 30 and 31. Thus, it is clear that the term powder keg is accurate, since it refers to something tangible, although only those who live there or are displaced can attest to it with knowledge of the facts. The rest of us, from the Peninsula, see the bulls from the sidelines.
This powder keg is undoubtedly the most pressing and urgent. Only in the short term it is unsolvable for a Government that cannot even offer guarantees on 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. Doing them requires time and a capacity to mobilize resources that is missing.
On the other hand, the total repatriation that has been promised is, clearly, impossible. And in the case of minors, legal guarantees will prevent the return of the majority no matter how much the government's discourse has changed if not turned around like a sock on the matter. So sooner or later, for some normality to return to Ceuta, if it does, the transfer and distribution of adults and minors throughout the Peninsula will be inevitable.
Only from the Strait to this part the situation also resembles that of a powder keg. More political and declarative than factual, but a tinderbox 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 extraordinary regularization in progress, 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 Executive in this matter, unless the Government of the Generalitat itself intends to harm itself.
Pedro Sánchez's Executive, according to Lola García's accurate analysis also yesterday, seeks impossible balances with its decisions regarding Ceuta. Do not bother Morocco, do not inflame the autonomous city more than necessary, do not give excuses to the EU to isolate Spain and, most importantly, do not completely lose the favor of national public opinion. A dish with too many ingredients that will force the Government to indigest, making it hostage – sooner rather than later – to its unfulfillable promises in resolving the crisis and leading it squarely into multiple contradictions and rectifications. The latter is the worst of evils in the interest of maintaining some credibility in an issue as thorny as immigration.
