Patxi López admits that the situation in Ceuta is "far from normal" after the migration crisis

The spokesperson for the Socialist Group in Congress, Patxi López, has admitted that the situation in Ceuta "is far from normal" after the migration crisis and has defended that the Executive acted "based on the information it had" at all times.

"It is evident that when a crisis happens, to the people who suffer it firsthand it will always seem that everything that is done is insufficient and I will tell those people that they are right. Surely more needs to be done and surely things could have been done faster," López stated in an interview on the LaSexta Xplica program broadcast this Saturday.

In this sense, López has explained that the declassification of the intelligence reports on the migratory crisis in Ceuta is "an exercise in unprecedented transparency" and has maintained that none of these documents warned of the "magnitude" or the "intensity" with which the massive entry of migrants into the autonomous city occurred.

As he explained, in none of the reports is there "an alert for this magnitude. Some even speak of low or medium risk, at most," he pointed out, later defending that, had the magnitude been known, "another series of decisions would have been adopted."

"If it had been said that there was a possibility of 80,000 people entering, another series of decisions would have been adopted, although none would have been to go with weapons, with the Army, Police or the Civil Guard to prevent that assault because then there would have been hundreds of deaths," he stated.

The socialist spokesperson recalled that security in Ceuta had already been reinforced in July with more than 500 agents between the National Police and the Civil Guard, and insisted that there is "no recognition of error in the chain of command" beyond the "need" to improve security against so-called "hybrid attacks."

Asked if the Government was slow to react and if the President of the Executive should have canceled his vacation, López defended that Sánchez "no matter how much he was in a vacation destination, he did not stop being connected to this matter for even a minute" and claimed that "not only was security reinforced with more agents," but that spaces have also been sought to process the files "one by one" and resources have been allocated to help the Ceuta economy.

López has also defended that the feeling of "subjective" insecurity that the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, attributes to the Ceuta population coexists with data that, as he said, "does not say that an alarming situation of insecurity is being experienced" in the city.

On the other hand, he has reproached the autonomous communities governed by the PP for not collaborating in the reception of migrant minors. "What are the autonomous communities governed by the Popular Party doing to help resolve this crisis?" he asked, later stating that "the only one that has come out" to show itself willing to pick up minors "has been Navarra", where it governs in PSOE.

The spokesperson has also stated that those who should resign are "all those who, instead of providing solutions to this crisis, seek to take advantage of it."