Last week, Minister Félix Bolaños asked for “respect” for Morocco. He asked ERC deputy Francesc-Marc Álvaro in a Congressional committee. “Morocco is a country with which we must collaborate and have good neighborly relations.” On Monday of this week, the President of the Government had nothing to reproach Morocco for. (Statements by Pedro Sánchez to the Ser channel).
On Tuesday, Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jets of the Spanish Air Force flew over Ceuta during maneuvers to refine coordination between the air force and artillery units on the ground. Morocco has taken note.
On Thursday, Sánchez opened his appearance in Congress by recalling that the lions that adorn the main steps of Parliament were cast with the bronze of the cannons confiscated from the Moroccans in the battle of Wad-Ras, in 1860, the epilogue of the first African war. “Ceuta and Melilla will be Spanish until the end of time,” said the president in his second speech.
With September adjustments always come.
"When I am President of the Government, my first trip will be to Morocco. [An unwritten custom of Spanish presidents, which Pedro Sánchez modified in 2018 by first traveling to Paris to meet with French President Emmanuel Macron], declared Alberto Núñez Feijóo on August 10 to the digital publication OK Diario. In the same interview he added: "I have an absolute interest in getting along with Morocco. I only ask that you respect me; I'm going to respect him.” Barely ten days had passed since the invasion of Ceuta, to put it in the language used this week by the Spanish right in Congress.
It was clear that the opposition leader did not want to antagonize the Moroccan regime, because he knows the role that Morocco plays in the control of irregular immigration and is aware of the crossed economic interests between the two countries, interests that are of special importance in Andalusia. Let's pay attention to the prudence that the president of the Junta de Andalucía, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, has been showing these weeks. Ten days after the invasion of Ceuta – we continue to use the dominant language today – Núñez Feijóo's message to Rabat was the following: I do not want to tighten the rope.
We had not yet entered the second phase of the crisis: the outbreak of unrest in Ceuta. Sánchez had not yet made the mistake of clinging throughout the month of August to an old Spanish custom when things get bad: impassive gestures. The gesture in La Mareta de Lanzarote, official holiday residence, is impassive. He was in daily contact with his ministers, but he did not want to move. The gesture was impassive, he made the mistake of his life.
In this week's debate, Feijóo has begun to try anti-Moroccan calligraphy, without resorting to Gothic font. He has accused Morocco of being behind the human avalanche and of subjecting the current Spanish president to blackmail, thanks to spying on his mobile phone in 2021. “I will be a free ruler,” he said.
Santiago Abascal also had his time of peace with Morocco. “Morocco is not the enemy, it is a neighboring nation with which we must have a relationship based on respect,” declared the president of Vox in May of this year, after signals arrived from the United States and Israel of a possible approach to the Moroccan claim of Ceuta and Melilla in retaliation for Spain's position regarding the massacre in Gaza and the war in Iran.
Abascal now assumes that Morocco is behind everything. He accuses Sánchez of being Mohamed VI's ambassador in Spain and proposes that Congress accuse the president of "high treason" and sit it before the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court, activating article 102 of the Constitution. The idea was launched in June, before the Ceuta crisis, by the veteran jurist Pedro Cruz Villalón, former president of the Constitutional Court, and was liked by opinion circles in Madrid, and Vox now endorses it to launch a challenge to the PP: dare. Feijóo is betting on another route: the investigation opened in the National Court by Judge María Tardón, former PP councilor in Madrid, could reach the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court.
Vox moves and shows the ability to maneuver on the other side of the Atlantic. He has just gotten the president of the Heritage Foundation, Trumpism's main laboratory of ideas, to explicitly support Spain's sovereignty over Ceuta and Melilla, as Javier Gallego reported last Friday in La Vanguardia.
September is a month of adjustments. After rebuking Spain for the events in Ceuta, the Danish government has just recognized Morocco's sovereignty over Western Sahara.
