The Ceuta crisis is worsened by intelligence errors and delays in the Government's response

The Ceuta crisis is becoming a nightmare for the Government of Pedro Sánchez. The Executive seems to be in a swamp of quicksand in which the more it moves, the more it seems to sink downwards. He needs to find a solution to get out of the mud or chaos will end up devouring him.

The story started badly due to the lack of foresight of the intelligence services in not detecting the invasion of migrants in time. The declassification that was carried out this week of the different materials that the different security teams had prepared has made them even more evident. It was a risky decision for the sake of transparency, but the result has not been the best for the Government. Because, if information has not been hidden from us, it does not seem the most serious thing that the CNI's formal notification is only through a WhatsApp to a chief of staff of a Government delegate. And this is what we highlight on our Thursday cover.

Now this official has resigned because his version and that of his boss do not coincide. The delegate says that his chief of staff did not notify him of this message. We also do not know if the CNI agent limited himself to sending this simple WhatsApp or sent the information to the headquarters of his intelligence service, which would allow more people to be aware of the looming crisis.

But apart from these obvious connection errors, the Government is taking more time than necessary to bring order to the chaos in Ceuta and prevent altercations from occurring in the autonomous city. The president of Ceuta, Juan Jesús Vivas, is accused of making it difficult to find spaces to locate migrants and also of agitating the population. In any case, the Executive cannot be at the expense of this and has the regulatory and legal capacity to apply its decisions. In the end, it imposed the location of an improvised camp in the port of Ceuta, given the delay in finding alternative spaces, but it took five weeks to do so.