Ceuta, fourth visit by the Spanish government and two irreconcilable counts

At 10:30 on Monday, in the Palacio de la Asamblea in Ceuta, the Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration Elma Saiz — who is also the spokesperson for the Spanish government — meets with the president of the autonomous city Juan Jesús Vivas. Two hours earlier, at 8:30, Ceuta’s Governing Council holds a special session on the city’s situation. The sequence of times already says a great deal: the local level defines its own position shortly before sitting down with Madrid.

It is the fourth visit by a member of the Spanish executive since the mass entry at the end of July: previously, sources report, Sánchez, Torres, Rego, Robles and Grande-Marlaska twice had arrived. The repeated trips to Ceuta are a political fact in themselves: they signal that the central government has chosen to physically oversee the dossier, and at the same time that none of the previous visits has closed it.

The knot is arithmetical before it is political. The Spanish government puts at 72,000 the number of people who entered Ceuta irregularly on 30 and 31 July, maintaining that most returned within 24-48 hours. On the remainder, however, the two administrations do not agree: Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska has put at around 5,000 the foreign nationals still present in the autonomous city, while Vivas puts the figure at 9,000 and is calling for immediate repatriations.

Four thousand people of difference are not an accounting detail. On that number depends the sizing of the humanitarian response — beds, assistance, staff — and the political assessment of how much the crisis has been absorbed or is still open. A government estimating 5,000 can argue that the bulk of the emergency has subsided; a local president counting 9,000 argues the opposite. Neither figure has, at this stage, been verified by an independent count.

“The city will not hold” (transl. from English) — Juan Jesús Vivas, President of the Autonomous City of Ceuta

Monday’s meeting has a stated purpose: to assess the humanitarian response set up after the entries of 30 and 31 July. This is the ground on which the central government and the autonomous city can reach a technical agreement — resources, facilities, staff — even while remaining apart on the political part, namely repatriations and their timing. Vivas is calling for them to be immediate; the executive, through the Interior Minister, has indicated the prospect of the return to Morocco of the large majority of those present, but without a public timetable.

What should be noted is what the verifiable picture does not contain. Available sources show no data on the composition of the group still present in the city, nor on the technical timeframes of repatriation procedures, nor on the outcome of any contacts with Rabat. Nor is there a public counting method explaining how the figure of 5,000 or 9,000 is reached: without that, the discrepancy stands.

The European context weighs on the matter, because the Ceuta crisis has already become a source of friction between capitals. But Monday’s meeting is internal: a minister of the Madrid government and the leadership of an autonomous city, with the list of things to be done divided between those who fund them and those who carry them out.

The day will produce at least one verifiable element: the formal position of Ceuta’s Governing Council emerging from the 8:30 special session, and the content of the 10:30 meeting. On everything else — figures, repatriations, timetable — the gap between the two public figures remains the first problem to be resolved.

Sources: Infobae/EFE; Diario en Positivo; El Constitucional; Moncloa.com.