Spanish PM Sanchez under fire over Ceuta crisis | DW News

Pressure has been growing on Spain's socialist leader Pedro Sanchez due to the continued influx of migrants. In the latest incident, more than 40 West African migrants were rescued from a boat drifting off of the Canary Islands by Spanish maritime authorities and transferred to a port in Gran Canaria. Several were in poor health and taken to the hospital. Rescuers say that they were unable to retrieve the bodies of five dead who were seen on board due to rough sea conditions. A migrants' rights group says that at least 80 more may have died making the crossing which reportedly started from Gambia several weeks ago. At the end of July, more than 70,000 migrants entered the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. A day after nationwide protests over Ceuta, Sanchez defended the actions of Spanish border guards in the city and said that close cooperation with Morocco allowed for the vast majority of migrants to be repatriated within days. Signs here in Madrid read Ceuta is not for sale, it is to be defended. Tens of thousands took part in nationwide protests in Spain. They accused Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez of allowing or even orchestrating the sudden crossing of over 70,000 migrants from Morocco into the Spanish North African enclave at the end of July. The Spanish government and Spain's intelligence services should have known about it and if they did not then we are very poorly governed. That would mean we could be invaded at any moment. The protests took place on Ceuta's annual public holiday. In the enclave, similar demonstrations overshadowed traditional festivities. We want a united Ceuta, a strong Spain. We want security, we want our homeland to function exactly as our constitution prescribes and we want the support of both Europe and the nation as a whole. Tens of thousands of migrants swam and climbed fences to enter Ceuta from Morocco within several hours. Most have since returned. According to Spain's national government, around 5,000 still remain, including around 1,200 minors. Sanchez says 141 migrants died attempting to make the crossing. Questions remain about what caused the sudden flow of migrants. Speaking to the parliament on Thursday, Sanchez rejected claims that Morocco was responsible. He also defended Spanish border guards for allowing migrants to enter Ceuta. The fact is that our officers had to make an operational decision within minutes. They had to choose between securing the border in the short term or protecting human life. They chose to protect human life. I believe this is very important. Sanchez says the investigation into the deadly border breach in Ceuta is ongoing. The EU says it's holding off and providing assistance to Spain until important questions are answered. And we are joined now by DW's correspondent in Spain, Jan-Philip Scholz. You've covered the events in Ceuta in July and you are back in Ceuta. You were there just two weeks ago. What were your impressions? What's the situation there now? There is still a severe humanitarian crisis in Ceuta. The first days after the mass crossing, the Spanish government gave the impression as if everything was under control. But this is truly not the case. There are still thousands of migrants sleeping on the streets. A lot of minors also sleeping on the streets. The shelters are completely overwhelmed. And the big problem at the moment is that there is a growing frustration among the residents in Ceuta. There have been incidences where food deliveries were stopped by residents. There have been even some violent clashes. So it's still a very tense situation. In the report, we heard from a protester who was saying that Spain was, quote, poorly governed. If the events in Ceuta at the end of July really caught the country off guard, where does the investigation into the incident stand now? I mean, it's a month later. Well, there are still a lot of questions unanswered, I would say. Everybody that knows Morocco a little bit knows it's a country with a very strong security service, with very strong security control. So it seems strange to a lot of observers that such a mass movement was not foreseen earlier. There are new police reports now by the Spanish police saying that some Moroccan officials even helped the migrants to cross the border or help them close to the border area. Or some others were very permissive. They basically just let it happen and waved them through. But what the ultimate cause of this mass crossing was still not answered. There are a lot of theories, social media, fake news is one theory. Also, a Spanish court ruling that gave more rights to arriving migrants. There are also theories that foreign governments were involved. Recently, the Spanish prime minister suggested that maybe actors in Israel and Russia could have been involved, but he also didn't present any evidence in this regard. So most questions unanswered still. What kind of groups called for the demonstrations? Well, officially it was a demonstration to show solidarity with the residents in Ceuta, but the reality is it was on an organizational level strongly supported by the opposition, especially by the conservative party and also the far-right party walks. But it would be too easy to say that it was just conservatives or far-right people on the street. There is a sense of, well, frustration and unhappiness with the government management of the crisis. And I would say across the social spectrum in Spain. And of course, especially in the city of Ceuta itself, where at least 20,000 people were on the streets yesterday. Can you talk a little bit about how Sanchez has been speaking with Morocco in all of this? Well, he has decided to exercise a very, what I would say, soft approach. Also today, when he gave his speech in Congress, he said that there has been cooperation with Morocco, even a very fruitful cooperation directly after the mass crossing. Some opposition groups go as far as accusing him that Morocco has some sort of compromising material. But of course, the opposition also doesn't present any evidence in this regard. Others say that Sanchez is truly worried that the conflict could escalate. As you know, there have been disputes between Spain and Morocco about the territories of Ceuta and Belia for decades. So there are a lot of reasons why Prime Minister Sanchez at the moment is really trying not to escalate the conflict, but to choose this quite soft approach. DW Correspondent Jan-Philippe Scholten, Seville in Spain. Thank you. The government. She served as Chief of Staff to Spain's Secretary of State for Immigration and Emigration, and today advises the Council of Europe on Migration. Gemma, it's good to have you with us. I'm sure you're aware of what we heard today, the Prime Minister Sanchez telling Parliament that it is absurd to think that his government knew about the influx of people beforehand and did nothing. So he's saying the government knew nothing about what was going to happen. Do you believe him? First, thank you very much for having me. And it's complicated to know if they know or not, but it's true that if they don't know, we have a problem of communication with Morocco, but also with the official and the service of intelligence in Spain. So I think that the idea is that they know that something was moving, but I think that the numbers or the volume of the people who was surprising for everyone. Sanchez has pointed to Russia, Israel and the far right spreading disinformation. I mean, how strong is the evidence that this disinformation actually caused the mass crossing of people that we saw a month ago? I think that it's clear that there is votes in countries like Russia or servers in countries such as Israel that could be part of the fake campaign or this kind of disinformation campaign. I don't think that the Prime Minister is saying that these countries are the governments, the main responsible for that, but maybe they're saying that there is some kind of sympathies or some kind of facilitations to that, because I think that it's important to understand that. I think that we need to see TELTA not only as a migration crisis, but something that is more geopolitical, and it's about countries that tries to destabilize, to create this destabilization inside the EU member states and inside the cooperation or solidarity between member states. So we've got what we've heard from the Prime Minister, and then we have the police assessment of what happened. The police report describes a planned operation beyond the capability of known smuggling groups. And the police report says Moroccan security officers showed extraordinary permissiveness with some allegedly guiding people towards the border. What should we conclude? Was Morocco involved in this influx? So I think that we need more information. This report of the police, it's important, but it's mainly done through open data, that it's important, but it's really specific, so I think that we need more information to be clear about the roles. It's true that the report says that in the level of the operational movements of the people, the gendarmerie, the Moroccan police, was not stopping them to cross. So that's something that we can see, because it's absolutely clear that the system that we have in the European Union, in terms of border control, puts today the control in hands of the third countries. So it's clear that the role in terms of stopping or permitting people to cross is crucial, and it's evident that the role in Morocco, active or passive, has been clear in that situation. But we need to know, and I think it's too early to establish which are the elements or which were the final goals of this kind of coup de force. We do have the fact that we had 70,000 people move across one of Morocco's most sensitive borders, and they did that in less than 24 hours. There had to be some role of the Moroccan authorities in this, wouldn't you agree? The idea is that it's true that this is a lot of people moving, and for sure I think that is kind of a poly-crisis situation, that maybe some of them have been pushed, others have been invited, others have been using their social networks to move. But at the end is that you have a lot of people in Morocco waiting for jumping or swimming, in that case, to Ceuta. So at some point, the authorities should know, and I'm not trying to say that they provoke, but it's true that they are there, seeing all these people trying to arrive to Ceuta, and we have seen this kind of temporary crisis, these punctual moments, and usually the Moroccan police is there. It has been said that on the 15th of August, another attempt was being tried and was being stopped in the Moroccan border. So that means that it was there. But I think that it's, meaning, putting all the emphasis on Morocco is okay, but I think that we need to understand the impact of that in terms of what we are talking about here. And we're talking about here that the EU has put the border control, because this is not a question of Spain, this is a EU question, in hands of third countries, that has a cost. And this is part of the cost that these decisions are making. Let me just stick with Morocco for a second. Prime Minister Sanchez, he says that there's no evidence at all that the Moroccan government was a part of this, that it planned this or that it executed this. A lot of people find that hard to believe. They think that this is a political statement on Sanchez's part, that he does not want to make the leader in Morocco angry. Is that what we're looking at? I think that we first, we need to understand that we're not going to find never clear evidence. I think it's super complicated to see that we're going to see a message, a comment saying that this is an order to whom, to whom, because this is kind of things that happens in a way that it's not easy to check. So in that sense, the proof, the idea here is that we have the evidence. The second question, I think it's more important, is why the Spanish government tries to avoid this kind of blaming, if you want to say. I think it's because the Spanish government, as part of the EU, needs Morocco to solve this crisis. So this is what happens when you externalize the control, that you need the people, the countries that are pushing with your career. And we need to understand that differently from other situations, for instance, the crisis in the Polish border with Belarus. In that sense, in that case, Morocco is a very important partner, economical partner, also with the European Union. So the level of criticism that the government could do, it's less than maybe the clear, or the one that we can do as analysers and experts. So I think that we need to understand that part of the problem that we are facing with the system of externalization is that it's difficult to blame who puts you in a very complex situation, because you also need them to solve this complex situation. That's true. That's true. We spend a lot of time talking about hybrid warfare these days. That is very true. Gemma Peñuel Jiménez, we appreciate you talking with us. We appreciate your insights tonight. Thank you.