The migratory crisis in Ceuta has acted as an apparent trigger for the legislative elections called on the 23rd in Morocco, to which citizens were turning their backs to the point that just four months ago there were 12 million voters missing (57%) in a voluntary registration census. In the elections held five years ago, only half of the 17.5 million voters then registered voted. The polls now indicated that participation was going to fall to a third of those registered. But the claim of sovereignty over the autonomous Spanish cities has stirred up the political debate in the previous phase of the electoral campaign, which does not officially begin until Friday, waiting for the parties to close their lists, and for a hidden favorite of the royal palace to emerge as a candidate for head of Government.
Up to three ministers have opened on the eve of the elections the Pandora's box of ignoring “the mutual commitment to avoid the use of unilateral claims of sovereignty” agreed by Rabat and Madrid in 2022, a year after the previous migratory crisis in Ceuta, in counterpart to the turn taken by the Spanish Government on the Sahara.
A week ago, the Minister of Public Equipment and Water, Nizar Baraka, sharply warned that Morocco “will not give up a single centimeter of its national territory”, alluding to the claim of Ceuta and Melilla. Baraka, leader of the historic nationalist party Istiqlal, was careful at the same time to highlight “the importance of the strategic association with Spain”, the first commercial partner and second investor in the Maghreb country.
Shortly before, it had been the head of Islamic Affairs, Ahmed Tufiq, an independent directly appointed by Mohamed VI, who alluded to Morocco's historic claim to Ceuta and Melilla, in a religious ceremony presided over by the king. Tufiq veiledly mentioned the two autonomous cities when referring to Islamic scholars born in Ceuta before the African place came under Spanish sovereignty in 1580, and their “sacred struggle to liberate the occupied cities”, at that time Portuguese possessions in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic.
Although the one who has led the Moroccan Government during the crisis to demand a negotiation process on sovereignty in Ceuta and Melilla has been the Minister of Justice, Abdelatif Uahbi, leader of the Party of Authenticity and Modernity (PAM). It was founded in 2008 by Fuad Ali el Himma, current royal advisor and strongman of the Sherifian kingdom.
In interviews with the media, Uahbi has intensely defended his country's “historical right” over the two autonomous Spanish cities in North Africa. Following his latest statements, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded on August 21 that Ceuta and Melilla “are part of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Spain, recognized internationally, and are also an integral part of the territory of the EU.” This same week, the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, revealed that on that date and in the absence of the ambassador, the number two of the Moroccan Embassy in Madrid had been summoned to present a formal protest.
Together with the Istiqlal Party (10% of the votes in the 2021 legislative elections) and the PAM (14%), the National Regrouping of Independents (RNI) led the coalition government that is now preparing to end the legislature with 29% of the votes. Its leader, Prime Minister Aziz Ajanuch, has been silent since the beginning of the crisis.
After it was revealed that he traveled on a private flight to Mallorca shortly after up to 80,000 irregular migrants had overflowed the Ceuta border due to the inhibition of the Moroccan security forces, he has not made relevant public statements during the crisis.
Ajanuch, whose family controls the second fortune in Morocco, behind the Al Mada group, in the hands of the Alawite royal family, ruled himself out months ago as a candidate for his conservative party to return to preside over the Cabinet after the elections.
Climate of national mobilization
“The question of the recovery of Ceuta and Melilla has returned to the heart of the Moroccan political and media debate (…) in the face of public opinion that rejects that they are under Spanish sovereignty,” points out political analyst Ali Anouzla. “It is a credible hypothesis that this is rhetoric intended mainly for the Moroccan public to create a climate of national mobilization and revive patriotic sentiment,” concludes the editor of the Lakome digital platform, “after the images of a mass exodus that have hit the public's sensibilities and tarnished the country's image abroad.”
Since Baraka, leader of Istiqlal, launched one of his party's usual nationalist proclamations about Ceuta and Melilla on August 29, claims of sovereignty have not arisen again. Sources from his political formation specify that, although the same repeated message from Baraka has been echoed on the social networks of the electoral campaign, the general secretary of Istiqlal has not commented on the issue since last month.
The call by Foreign Affairs of the person in charge of the Moroccan legation in Madrid; The interview of the head of Government on Cadena SER and, in particular, his intervention before Parliament seem to have marked the milestones of the withdrawal of Moroccan political pressure on Ceuta and Melilla.
The claim to sovereignty in the midst of the Ceuta migration crisis that was shaking up the electoral campaign and marking the agenda of some parties has been diluted in the last week. This phenomenon has coincided with the turn taken by Sánchez, when he announced in his speech on Thursday in Congress a forceful response if Moroccan involvement in the orchestration of the migratory avalanche of July 30 and 31 is demonstrated.
