Spanish royals make sensitive visit to crisis-hit Ceuta
Spain’s King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia make a diplomatically sensitive visit to Ceuta on Tuesday in support of a city mired in crisis since July’s migrant rush from Morocco.
Their trip will mark the first royal visit since 2007 when a diplomatic crisis erupted with neighbouring Morocco, which claims sovereignty over Ceuta and Spain’s other North African territory of Melilla.
More than 70,000 migrants streamed into the small city of around 80,000 inhabitants in an unprecedented surge on July 30th-31st that left scores dead.
Most of the migrants returned in the following hours, but thousands have remained for weeks in often dire conditions, sleeping rough in the streets or on the beach.
The crisis has angered locals and eroded Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s standing before a November 29th general election in which migration will feature prominently.
“The king should have come on the first or second day. And he should have come dressed as captain general of the armed forces, which is what he is,” said Ceuta resident Susana Román.
“For Ceutans it would have been an unequivocal sign that the state was here,” added Román, a 57-year-old jurist who is part of the “Let’s Save Ceuta” platform.
Kiosk vendor Manuel Fernández, 66, plans to take the day off to see the royals, telling AFP “we really needed” their support.
READ ALSO: Can Spain’s Sánchez survive Ceuta migrant crisis?
Tribute to dead
The government insists it must respect international law by assessing whether the migrants are entitled to asylum, while hundreds of unaccompanied children cannot be summarily deported.
The authorities have set up thousands of places in temporary shelters and cleared the main camps on the beaches, but some migrants continue to occupy the surrounding hills and the streets.
“If the king had come on the second day of the invasion, he would have come across all the mess that we had here,” said 33-year-old civil servant Ana Muñoz.
“Now he will see that everything is clean… because they (the migrants) have already been moved from one place to another,” said Muñoz, who has partly lost faith in the monarch.
Felipe and Letizia begin their trip by meeting the city’s authorities in the town hall, followed by a visit to a school.
They will visit a cemetery where they will pay tribute to the migrants who died, most by drowning as they tried to swim around a border barrier.
Felipe is also due to make a speech during a meeting with members of Ceuta’s civil society before the monarchs travel to Melilla on Wednesday.
READ ALSO: Why are there still thousands of migrants in Spain’s Ceuta?
Diplomatic risks
The royal visit comes at a particularly sensitive time for Spain’s historically delicate relations with Morocco, as rumours swirl over the potential role Rabat played in the rush.
The Spanish right has accused Morocco of orchestrating it for political motives, which Rabat and Sánchez have denied.
Moroccan King Mohammed VI broke his silence on Friday, condemning “the irresponsible statements made by certain political and media circles and their blatant instrumentalisation of the situation”, in apparent reference to Spanish criticism.
Ceuta resident Mohamed Hamadi, 41, was unconcerned about the potential diplomatic fallout and hopes to see Felipe and Letizia.
“What business does the king of Morocco have here? Him and his opinion, if Ceuta has always been Spanish?” Hamadi told AFP.
