They represent what the entire Local Police budget represents.

So far this year there are already 2,162 people those who have been tense to Ceuta by land. According to official figures from the Interior Ministry, ending October 15, this means 150% more than those accumulated on the same date last year.

And the city’s centers for unaccompanied minors (menas) are already at 500% of its capacityaccording to data that the local government sent to Moncloa.

The city demands a “immediate and urgent relief” that of the nation. Its public coffers are “close to bankruptcy”. The Government of Ceuta, in the hands of the Popular Party, also feels trapped.

Negotiations to resolve the “migratory emergency” are carried out between the Minister of Territorial Policy, Angel Victor Torres; the spokesperson for the PP in Congress, Miguel Tellado; and the president of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo. That is to say that Ceuta has no voiceeven if it finds itself, proportionally, in a worse situation than that of the islands.

According to sources in Ceuta, the leader of the Canarian Coalition (CC) has agreed with the popular Vivas to defend common positions, and the understanding between the two is “very satisfactory”.

But the political consequences of this type of negotiation fully affect the autonomous city. The PP and CC govern in coalition on the islands and, when the crisis becomes unbearable, Alberto Nuñez Feijóo reached an agreement on immigration policies with Clavijo last September.

This document takes up Vivas’ concerns regarding Ceuta, but the political battle waged by Moncloa led Torres to consider the signing of this pact as an affront of war.

They suspected it before, but since then, both Tellado and Clavijo have suspected – already expressed several times in public – that Moncloa has “more interest in torpedoing the government coalition in the Canary Islands than in finding real solutions to the migration crisis.

The failure of negotiations two weeks ago due to a political confrontation —the government’s refusal to ask the EU for the aid it is offering—left Ceuta “abandoned”, according to sources in the autonomous city government.

And Vivas cannot figure out how to rebel: on the one hand, he owes “loyalty” to his party, the PP, with whom he does not discuss the reasons why he left the table; and on the other hand, it guarantees “institutional loyalty” to the Spanish government.

Institutional loyalty

Among other things, because Ceuta depends economically, socially and politicallyas much as Melilla —and more than any other national territory outside the peninsula— have a fluid relationship with the Spanish government. The plans of jobthe policies of Health and education (not transferred), the transportation of products of first necessity, the taxationand until energy supplyare subject to the decisions of the Council of Ministers.

And even more, the characteristic border of Ceuta, which with Melilla is the only land limits in Africa of any territory of the European Unionmark the city’s economy with fire. Relations with the neighboring country are turbulent: in theory, they inaugurate “a new stage” since April 2022. But in reality, commercial customs still not open after two yearsand Rabat shows no signs that things will be resolved any time soon.

“We are isolated,” explain sources from the Ceuta government. “In this sense, We are even more of an island than the Canary Islands“. And meanwhile, no one is solving the immigration crisis, which is leading to “the collapse of the public treasury” of the city.

The situation is now “unsustainable without palliatives” for the Government of Ceuta, according to sources consulted within Vivas.

Ceuta migration crisis

The reception capacity for unaccompanied minors is exceeded five times, and “the monthly deficit caused by this emergency is 1.2 million euros”. Or an amount “equivalent to the monthly cost of the entire local policy”.

Ceuta’s public treasury is therefore “broken in its budgetary balance” and the “risk of financial collapse” is imminent.

The Autonomous City Government has publicly declared aligned with that of Sánchez to the extent that “a structural response is necessary” based on the transfer of minors to other Autonomous Communities, “according to objective distribution criteria”.

But it was the negotiations that failed: Moncloa established that the legal tool is a reform of article 35 of the immigration law, so that these distributions are obligatory. For their part, the Canaries and the PP demand that the State commits to ensuring financing and agreeing on distribution quotas.

Minister Torres took two months (from August to early October) to draft a document with the autonomy costs.

The proposal was going to be rejected by Clavijo and especially by Tellado at the October 7 meeting. But this ultimately did not happen since the PP suspended negotiations to protest against Sánchez’s refusal to use Frontex and the distribution mechanism it proposed. Ursula von der Leyenwith other EU member states.

Last Wednesday, Torres announced a meeting for the 22nd with Clavijo and Telladobut this newspaper was able to confirm that this quote was never called officially. “The government has not reviewed its policy, or rather its absence of policy,” declares a spokesperson close to the PP spokesperson. “So nothing has changed.”.

Meanwhile, Vivas reminds Moncloa that he can’t wait. And that even if in the long term, this “is everyone’s business, not just the land or maritime borders” of Spain, until the “stable and consensual political solution” arrives, Ceuta “cannot be abandoned to its fate until the collapse of its Treasury”.

The president of the Autonomous City will wait his turn and refuses to make public statements, as this newspaper asked him to do, to respect deadlines and forms. But he has already informed the ministries concerned by letter that Ceuta “requires immediate and urgent aid”in covering expenses caused by the emergency of menas “and for the time during which this continues.”

In his letters to the government, the Baron of Ceuta warned against “obvious and very serious consequences of all kinds what would it be like not to face the aforementioned eventuality.”

Conference of Presidents

The individual meetings that Moncloa said Sánchez would hold with each regional president before the preparatory session of the Conference of Presidents will no longer arrive on time. This meeting is scheduled for Monday October 28 and the President of the Government He has only seen 12 of the 19 presidents Communities and Autonomous Cities.

For a month, the meetings have been taking place, in groups of three per week, with Imanol Pradales, Alphonse Rueda And Juanma Moreno. With Maria José Saenz de Buruaga, Gonzalo Capellán And Adrien Barbon. With Emiliano García-Page, Carlos Mazon And Fernando Lopez Miras. And with Fernando Clavijo, Jorge Azcon And Maria Chivite.

The appointments have not gone well for Sánchez, because he intends to concentrate the Conference of Presidents announced in July and which, ultimately, will not be held until December, on Housing policies. But everything barons Regional governments demand that you include two other topics, which are the most urgent for them.

On the one hand, the new regional financing model. The system has been outdated for a decade, that is to say longer due to the responsibility of the socialist Pedro Sánchez than that of his predecessor in Moncloa, the popular Mariano Rajoy.

And above all a debate which was opened “in a nasty way”depending on the call Agreement of the 14th leaders of the autonomy in which the PP governs, in full agreement of the “concert of independence” agreed by Sánchez with Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya for the investiture of Salvador Illa.

And on the other hand, the migration crisis. A phenomenon that has reached the level of “humanitarian emergency” for Clavijo from the Canary Islands and for Vivas from Ceuta, this already implies “an extreme situation, on the verge of bankruptcy, for migrant miners”.

Other requests from Ceuta

This is how he himself transmitted it baron Ceuta, in recent times, to prepare his individual nomination to Moncloa, although his feeling, according to sources, is that the government of the nation seeks to force the situation so that Vivas finds himself facing his party.

In its latest communication with the government, which was with Felix Bolanos As head of the presidency, a document was sent with other major requests and priorities. The key lies in Ceuta’s dependence on state presence. He therefore claims meet their “pressing needs” in health and educationexpanding the offer of higher education and vocational training. The idea is “on the one hand to attract talent and, on the other hand, to develop the knowledge economy”.

In addition, Ceuta must progress in the incentives included in personal income tax, corporate tax and social security contributions promote employment and entrepreneurship. Complete the electrical connection with the peninsula, through the installation of a submarine cablea key element for the survival of the city.

The president warns that The port of Ceuta needs to be revitalizedin terms of transport of people and goods, make communications cheaper maritime connections with the peninsula, in addition to air connections.

Finally, Vivas demands particular attention to the question of borders. The local president recalls that it is essential “to improve the equipment and increase the staff” of the defense, security and justice bodies.

And although it celebrates the introduction of the access visa to Ceuta for people who do not reside in the Schengen area, it also demands that Moncloa puts pressure on Morocco in matters of commercial customs. Because there is a “dependence” on Rabat collaboration in immigration containment. This is why he is asking for investments to be made, both in infrastructure as in human, material and technological resources to guarantee the integrity of our border.